by Dave Eggers
The minister, a corpulent stranger in black and white and that churchy neon green they wear, was at a loss. My father was an atheist, and thus this minister, who knew my father only through what he had been told an hour before, talked about how much my father enjoyed his work (Did he? we wondered, having no idea one way or the other), and how much he enjoyed golf (he did, we knew that much). Then Bill got up. He was dressed well; he knew how to wear suits. He made some jokes, bantered brightly, a little too brightly, perhaps, a little too a-few-jokes-to-warm-up-the-crowd (he was at the time doing a lot of public speaking). Beth and I nudged my mother a few times in solidarity, embarrassed further, always looking for fun at his expense, mocking the leavened earnestness. And then we filed out, everyone watching our mother and her slow careful steps, she smiling to all, happy to see everyone, all these people she hadn’t seen in so long. We milled a little in the foyer, and then told everyone that we’d be having a little party at home, we had so much food people had brought by, thanks by the way, if anyone wanted to come by.
Many came, my mother’s friends, brother’s, sister’s, my friends from high school and college, home for Thanksgiving, and with everyone there and it dark out and winter, I spent much of the time trying to convert what was a sort of dour affair into something fun. I hinted that someone should get some beer—Someone should get a case, man, I whispered to Steve, a college friend—but no one did. I thought we should be getting drunk, not out of misery or whatever, but just—it was a party, right?
Bill was out from D.C. with the girlfriend we didn’t like. Kirsten got jealous because Marny, an old girlfriend of mine, was there. Sitting in the family room, we tried to play Trivial Pursuit, still dressed in jackets and ties, but it wasn’t much fun, especially without the beer. Toph played Sega in the basement with a friend. My mother sat in the kitchen while her old volleyball friends stood around her, drinking wine, laughing loudly.
Les came by. He was the only friend of our father’s who we actually knew, who we had ever really heard anything about. Years ago, they had been at the same downtown law firm, and even after they each left and went elsewhere they still commuted into Chicago together occasionally. As Les and his wife were gathering their coats and scarves to leave, Beth and I met him at the door, thanked him. Les, a kind and funny man, meandered into talking about my father’s driving.
“He was the best driver I’ve ever seen,” said Les, marveling. “So smooth, so in control. He was incredible. He would see three, four moves ahead, would drive with a only few fingers on the wheel.”
Beth and I were eating it up. We had never heard anything about our father, knew nothing about him outside of what we’d seen ourselves. We asked Les for more, anything. He told us how our father used to call Toph the caboose.
“Yeah, I didn’t even know his name for a long time,” Les said, shaking his shoulders into his coat. “Always ‘the caboose.’”
Les was great, so great. We had never heard this term. It was not used in the house, not once. I pictured my father saying it, pictured him and Les at a restaurant off Wacker, him telling Les jokes about Stosh and Jon, the two Polish fishermen. We wanted Les to stay. I wanted Les to tell me what my father thought about me, about us, the rest of us, if he knew he was in trouble, if he had given up (why had he given up?). And Les, why was he still going to work, a few days before he expired? Did you know that, Les? That he was at work four days before? When did you last talk to him, Les? Did he know? What did he know? Did he tell you? What did he say about all this?
We ask Les if he’ll come for dinner sometime. He says yes, of course. Just call, whenever.
I did not know that the last time I saw my father would be the last time I would see my father. He was in intensive care. I had come up from college to visit, but because it had been so soon after his diagnosis, I didn’t make much of it. He was expected to undergo some tests and treatment, get his strength back, and return home in a few days. I had come to the hospital with my mother, Beth, and Toph. The door to my father’s room was closed. We pushed it open, heavy, and inside he was smoking. In intensive care. The windows were closed and the haze was thick, the stench unbelievable, and in the midst of it all was my father, looking happy to see us.
No one talked much. We stayed for maybe ten minutes, huddled on the far side of the room, attempting as best we could to stay away from the smoke. Toph was hiding behind me. Two green lights on the machine next to my father blinked, alternately, on, off, on, off. A red light stayed steady, red.
My father was reclining on the bed, propped against two pillows. His legs were crossed casually, and he had his hands clasped behind his head. He was grinning like he had won the biggest award there ever was.
After a night in the emergency room and after a day in intensive care, she is in a good room, a huge room with huge windows.
“This is the death room,” Beth says. “Look, they give you all this space, room for relatives, room to sleep...”
There is another bed in the room, a big couch that folds out, and we are all in the bed, fully dressed. I forgot to change my pants before we left the house, and the stain from the spill is brown, with black edges. It is late. Mom is asleep. Toph is asleep. The foldout bed is not comfortable. The metal bars under the mattress dig.
A light above her bed is kept on, creating a much-too-dramatic amber halo around her head. A machine behind her bed looks like an accordion, but is light blue. It is vertical and stretches and compresses, making a sucking sound. There is that sound, and the sound of her breathing, and the humming from other machines, and the humming from the heater, and Toph’s breathing, close and constant. Mom’s breaths are desperate, irregular.
“Toph snores,” Beth says.
“I know,” I say.
“Are kids supposed to snore?” “I don’t know.”
“Listen to her breathing. It’s so uneven. It takes so long for every breath.”
“It’s terrifying.”
“Yeah. It’s like twenty seconds sometimes.”
“It’s fucking nuts.”
“Toph kicks in his sleep.”
“I know.”
“Look at him. Out cold.”
“I know.”
“He needs a haircut.”
“Yeah.”
“Nice room.”
“Yeah.”
“No TV, though.”
“Yeah, that’s weird.”
After most of the guests left, Kirsten and I had gone into my parents’ bathroom. The bed would squeak, and we didn’t really want to sleep there anyway, the way it smelled, like my father, the pillows and walls soaked in it, the gray smell of smoke. The only reason any of us ever went in there was either to steal change from his dresser or to go through their window to get onto the roof— you had to go through their window to get to the roof. Everyone in the house was asleep, downstairs and in the various bedrooms, and we were in my parents’ walk-in closet. We brought blankets and a pillow into the carpeted area between the wardrobe and the shower, and spread the blanket on the ground, in front of the mirrored sliding closet doors.
“This is weird,” Kirsten said. Kirsten and I met in college, had dated for many months, and for a long time we were tentative—we liked each other a great deal but I expected someone so normal and sweet-looking to find me out soon enough—until one weekend she came home with me, and we went to the lake, and I told her my mother was sick, had been given time parameters, and she told me that that was weird, because her mother had a brain tumor. I had known that her father had disappeared when she was young, that she had been working, year-round, since she was fourteen, I knew she was strong but then there were these new words coming from her face, these small shadowy words. From then on we were more serious.
“Too weird,” she said.
“No, this is good,” I said, undressing her.
Everywhere people were sleeping—my mother in Beth’s room, my friend Kim on the living room couch, my friend Brooke on the family room couch,
Beth in my old room, Bill in the basement, Toph in his room.
We were quiet. There was nothing left of anything.
Beth remembers first, with a gasp, in the middle of the night. We had been vaguely conscious of it, in recent days, but then we had forgotten, until just now, at 3:21 a.m., that tomorrow—today—is her birthday.
“Shit.”
“Shh.”
“He can’t hear. He’s asleep.”
“What should we do?”
“There’s a gift shop.”
She will not know that we had almost forgotten.
“Yeah. Balloons.”
“Flowers.”
“Sign Bill’s name.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe a stuffed animal.” “God, it’s all so gift-shoppy.” “What else can we do?” “Ow!” “What?”
“Toph just kicked me.”
“He turns in his sleep. A hundred eighty degrees.” “Hear that?” “What?” “Listen!” “What?”
“Shhh! She hasn’t breathed.” “How long?” “Seems like forever.” “Fuck.”
“Wait. There she goes.” “God that’s weird.” “It’s terrible.”
“Maybe we should wait until we get home before the birthday thing.”
“No, we have to do something.”
“I hate that this room is on the first floor.”
“Yeah, but it’s a nice room.”
“I don’t like the headlights.”
“Yeah.”
“Should we close the curtains?”
“No.”
“What about in the morning?”
“No, why?”
At 4:20 Beth is asleep. I sit up and look at Mom. She has hair again. For so long she did not have hair. She’d had five wigs, at least, over a number of years, all of them sad in the way wigs are sad. One was too big. One was too dark. One was too curly. One was frosted. Still, most of them had looked more or less real. The odd thing was that her current hair was real, but had grown back much curlier than her original hair, and curlier even than her curliest wig. And darker. Her hair now looked more like a wig than any of the wigs.
“Funny how your hair grew back in,” I had said.
“What’s funny about it?”
“Well, how it’s darker than before.”
“It is not.”
“Of course it is. Your hair was gray almost.”
“No it wasn’t. I had it frosted.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“It was never gray.”
“Fine.”
I lie back down. Beth’s breathing is heavy, quiet. The ceiling looks like milk. The ceiling is moving slowly. The corners of the ceiling are darker. The ceiling looks like cream. The metal bar that bisects and supports the bed’s mattress digs into our backs. The ceiling is fluid.
When my father was in intensive care, about a day and a half from throwing in the towel, a priest was sent, presumably to administer last rites. After meeting him and ascertaining the purpose of the visit, my father quickly dismissed him, sent him out. When the doctor related this story later—it had become something of a legend on the floor—he made reference to the axiom that denies the existence of atheists in the proverbial trenches: “They say there are no atheists in the trenches,” the doctor said, looking at the floor, “hut...whew!” He wouldn’t even let the man do some sort of cursory prayer, Hail Mary, anything. The priest had come in likely knowing that my father was not a churchgoer, not affiliated with any church at all. But thinking that he was doing my dad a favor, he offered some sort of chance at repentance, a one-in-a-thousand raffle ticket for redemption. But see, my father had as much patience for religion as he did for solicitors ringing the bell. To them, he would open the door, grin his dopey grin, say no thanks quickly and brightly, then close the door firmly. Which is what he did with this poor, well-meaning priest: He grinned his big grin, and, being unable to get up and show the poor man the business side of the door himself, just said, “No thanks.”
“But, Mr. Eggers — “
“No thanks, goodbye.”
We’ll get her out in a few days. Beth and I have vowed to get her out, have planned to break her out, even if the doctors say no; we will hide her under a gurney, will pose as doctors, will wear sunglasses and go quickly and will take her to the car, and I will lift her and Toph will provide some distraction if necessary, something, a little dance or something; and then we’ll jump in the car and be gone, will bring her home, triumphant—we did it! we did it!—and we’ll get a hospital bed and put it in the living room, where the couch was. We’ll arrange for a nurse, twenty-four hours a day—actually, the bed and the nurse will be arranged by a woman, Mrs. Rentschler, who used to live across the street, in the house whose yard my father was looking at, on his knees, a woman who had moved away long ago, but only to another part of town, and then suddenly she is again there, she is part of the hospital’s hospice program, and she will make the arrangements and she will hug us and we will like her though we never knew her before. One of the nurses will be a large, middle-aged black woman from North Chicago who will speak with a southern accent and will bring her own Bible, and will cry sometimes, her shoulders shaking. There will be a sullen younger woman from Russia who will show up angry and will perform her duties in a clipped, rushed manner and will nap when we aren’t watching. There will be a nurse who comes one day and will not return the next. There will be women, our mother’s friends, who will come and visit, in makeup and fur coats. There will be Mrs. Dineen, an old family’friend, who will come out from Massachusetts for a week, because she wants to be here, to see Mom again, and will sleep in the basement and will talk about spirituality. It will snow prodigiously. The nurses will clean my mother when we are not in the room or awake. There will be vigils. We will enter the room at any hour of the day or night and, if our mother is not awake, we will freeze, then get ready, then walk over and put our hands over her mouth to see if she’s breathing. One day she will let us summon her sister Jane, and we will pay to fly her out, just in time. When Aunt Jane arrives at the bedside, after we have picked her up at the airport, our mother, who at this point will not have sat up in days, will shoot up like a child from a nightmare, and will hold her sister who will smile wide and close her eyes. There will be an endless stream of visitors, who will sit casually at our mother’s side and chat about recent happenings, because, because a dying person doesn’t want to talk about dying, would rather hear about who’s getting divorced, whose kids are in rehab or will be soon. There will be baked goods. There will be Father Mike, a young red-haired priest who will make it clear that he’s not going to try to convert anybody, and will do Mass while she stays in bed, will skip the wafer part for her lack of stomach, and Mrs. Dineen will take communion too; I’ll watch some of it as I’m cooking a frozen pizza in the kitchen. There will be the rosary fetched from the cabinet upstairs. We will light candles to stave off the smell that emanates from her pores after her liver stops working. We will sit next to the bed and hold her hands, which are hot. She will sit up suddenly in the middle of the night, talking loudly, incomprehensibly. All words will be considered her last, until they are followed by others. When Kirsten walks into the room one day she will rise suddenly and insist that Kirsten see the naked man in the fish tank. We will suppress laughs—she will have been insisting on the naked man for days—and Kirsten, with a certain degree of seriousness, will actually go over to the fish tank to look, a gesture Mom will take, with first a roll of the eyes and then a deeply satisfied smile, as vindication. Then she will lie back down, and in a few days her mouth will dry up, and her lips will chap and scab, and the nurse will moisten them every twenty minutes with a Q-tip. There will be morphine. Between her hair, which for some reason will continue to look oddly pert, fluffy, and her skin, shiny, tan-and-jaundiced, and her glossy lips, she will look great. She will be wearing the satin pajamas Bill bought for her. We will play music. Beth will play Pachelbel and, when that seems a bit much, we
will put on sweeping New Age music produced by my father’s sister, Aunt Connie, who lives in Marin County with a talking cockatoo. The morphine drip will not be enough. We will call again and again for more. Finally we will have enough, and will be allowed to choose the dosage ourselves, and soon will administer it every time she moans, by allowing it to flow through the clear tube and into her, and when we do the moaning stops.
We will leave while they take her away and when we come back the bed will be gone, too. We will move the couch back, against the wall, where it was before the bed came. A few weeks later a friend will arrange for Toph to meet the Chicago Bulls, after they practice at that gym in Deerfield, and Toph will bring his basketball cards, one or two of each of them, rookie cards mostly, those being worth more, so the players can sign them and make them more valuable. We will watch them scrimmage through the window, then, after practice, there they are, in their sweat suits— they come out specially, had been asked to—and Scottie Pippen and Bill Cartwright will ask Toph, as they’re signing his cards with the permanent marker that he’s brought, why he isn’t in school, it being a Wednesday or Monday or whatever day it will be, and he will just shrug— Beth and I will pull him from school from time to time that spring, when something comes up or just whenever, because while we want to keep alive an air of normalcy, half the time we just say fuck it, and he’s so happy, glowing to have met the Bulls, now has all these ludicrously valuable cards, and on the way home we will discuss getting them notarized to make sure people know that he was there. Bill will change jobs to be closer, will move from D.C. to L.A., just after the riots, and will do his think-tanking there. He’ll handle all the money, from insurance and the house—there was nothing saved, nothing really at all— and Beth will handle the bills and forms and other paperwork and, because we’re the closest in age and it was never really up for debate, Toph will be with me. But first he’ll finish third grade, and I’ll drop some classes and, though whatever number of credits short, will go through the graduation ceremony, with Beth and Toph and Kirsten there, dinner afterward but low-key, let’s keep it low-key, no big thing. And afterward, a week at most, while people, old people, are frowning and clicking their tongues and shaking their heads, we will sell that house, will sell most of its contents, would have burned the fucker down had we been able, and we will move to Berkeley, where Beth will start law school and we’ll all set up somewhere, a nice big house in Berkeley with all of us, with a view of the Bay, close to a park with a basketball court and enough room to run—