God is in the Pancakes (4 page)

“Wow,” I say, “I didn't think people in
that
crowd were allowed to look so unhappy in public places. They're supposed to look beautiful, content, and above it all.”

“Like beautiful people are contractually obligated to be perfect?” Eric takes the last piece of my RK treat.

“Precisely.” I nod. “And from personal experience I can tell you it's a real grind. That's why when it came time to renew my own Beautiful Person Contract with America, I walked away. Decided showing my flaws to the world was the better choice.”

“Good call.”

“Hey, you were supposed to reply, ‘Flaws? But you don't have any flaws, Grace!'”

“Dammit!” Eric says, smacking the table. “Guess that's why I'll never be perfect myself.”

“That's okay, I like that you're a screwup. Gives you character.”

“You know what else gives me character?” He smiles and cocks an eyebrow at me. “Being one of the only sophomore guys on the varsity basketball team.”

“That's true,” I say. “Although part of me was hoping to see you shake your pom-poms on the cheerleading squad.”

Eric picks up one of the gummi bears that had landed on the ground and then chucks it at me.

“I probably deserved that.”

“Oh, you definitely deserved that,” he laughs. I smile at him as I watch Natalie and Rich get up and leave the coffee shop, the two of them looking a lot less perfectly happy together than the two of us.

I
n art class we learned a term called
trompe l'œil
. In French it literally means “to deceive the eye,” and it's a technique artists use to create optical illusions. The artist does this by painting an object intensely realistically and making it appear three-dimensional instead of the flatter-looking two. What this does is to trick the viewer into seeing the thing as not just part of a painting, but as something real. For instance, a ceiling might be painted with clouds, a plaster wall could be made to look like it's constructed of stone, or a magazine cover might feature naked models whose bodies are painted to appear fully dressed. Part of what I think is so cool about trompe l'œil is that the way an artist achieves the technique is by mastering perspective, but the way a viewer sees it is by losing perspective.

It seems to me, we allow ourselves to lose perspective all the time, especially when it comes to things we expect or want to see. For instance, if you believe in something deeply enough, you'll often blind yourself to the reality of a situation so you can stay focused on what you hope will happen instead. In a sense, hope is the ultimate trompe l'œil because it blurs your perspective by mixing reality with desire.

Though I'm not looking forward to the talk I have to have with Mr. Sands today, I'm not dreading it as much as I imagined I would. I think it's because even though I'm going to tell him I can't help him with his “request,” staying positive and believing things will get better feels right.

When I get to his room, the door is closed. I knock and wait for a moment as I hear someone inside shuffling toward the door.

“Yes?” asks a nurse I don't recognize as she opens the door just wide enough to poke her head out.

“I'm here to see Mr. Sands?”

“Are you a relative?” new nurse questions.

“I'm Grace.” No recognition. “One of the candy stripers?” New nurse doesn't seem impressed. “I was just stopping by to say hello.”

“Uh-huh,” she replies. “We're doing a little procedure in here now, Grace, so you can't come in at the moment.”

“Oh, is everything okay?”

“We're trying to make Mr. Sands more comfortable, which he will be once we clear his lungs and get him fitted with the BiPAP machine,” she says.

“Okay, I'll just come back later then.”

New nurse looks at her watch. “He should get some rest, so why don't you come back another day? I'll be sure to let him know you were asking for him.” She lets the door close between us.

I walk back down the hall of the constant care unit. I guess I hadn't realized Mr. Sands was particularly uncomfortable before. He'd been in the wheelchair since I'd met him, and over the past few months he'd get these random twitches in his arms and neck. But even though he'd joke about how he needed to get to the gym because his “pipes” were getting weaker, he never liked talking about his health with me. In fact, whenever I'd ask how he was feeling, he'd ignore the question. “Grace, folks here make me talk about how I'm feeling so much, I could star in my own TV movie on one of those women's channels,” he replied. “So do me a favor and let's not talk about it.” Then he'd switch the subject.

Between hands of poker we'd chat about TV shows (my favorite topic), articles in the newspaper (his), and occasionally the subject of my dad. I didn't like to talk about my dad and the way he left because the whole thing seemed so embarrassing to me. Dad just stole off one day and started a new life, as if Mom, Lolly, and I were mistakes he no longer wanted to deal with or look at. Actually, I wasn't sure who to be more embarrassed for—him, for his incredibly lame behavior, or us for inspiring it. But I wasn't self-conscious around Mr. Sands and I started telling him everything, even about how for the first few days after Dad left I refused to believe he wasn't coming right back.

“Boy, I know that logic,” Mr. Sands told me. “Refuse to accept the truth—simply ignore a problem—and you can make it go away, right?” He laughed. “Unfortunately, no matter how many times I tried it, that stupid trick never worked for me.” He looked down at his legs, which no longer worked for him either. “But I get the impulse. And trust me, Gracie, you look around this place and you'll see a lot of similarly ‘magical thinking.' ”

Jeff Potts, the activities director at Hanover House, is in the volunteers' office, putting flyers in mailboxes, when I walk in. He's in his mid-forties but he still has the build of his days in the navy, and you can tell this because the shirts he wears are always one size too small. I guess he's considered a good-looking guy, and I might think so too, if it weren't for the finky mustache that clings to the top of his lip like a dying caterpillar. I can't help wonder why someone doesn't say something to him about that. But the old ladies love him, and I've often thought it's probably because that stupid 'stache makes him look like some 1940s film idol.

“Grace!” Jeff says. “How goes things? Good?”

“Yeah.” I run the zipper up and down my hoodie, feeling more anxious than good. “I guess.”

“You sure do sound convinced of that.” Jeff laughs.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You bet,” he replies, widening his stance and folding his arms under his pecs.

“Why would someone need a bebop machine?”

“A BiPAP machine?” Jeff corrects with a smile. “Well, that's a device that helps with breathing, I believe. Do you know someone who's having respiratory problems?”

“I just went to see Mr. Sands and the nurse told me she was helping to fit him with one of them.”

Jeff nods. Then, cocking his head to the side he says, “Grace, has Mr. Sands told you anything about his condition?”

“Kinda, yeah,” I reply, not wanting to admit too much but wondering what Jeff knows. “I mean, he told me he had ALS.”

“Right, ALS—Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis—is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Do you know anything about Lou Gehrig?”

I shake my head, and I think Jeff looks mildly disappointed.

“Gehrig was a famous baseball player in the 1930s,” he continues. “Teammate of Babe Ruth's—you know who that is, right?” I nod, not willing to let my lack of Babe Ruth knowledge disappoint him further. “Well, when Gehrig contracted ALS, he was still playing ball, and he was at the height of his career. Because he was such a famous guy at the time, when he announced that he was suffering from the disease, he brought a lot of attention to it. Gehrig also handled himself with such dignity throughout his illness that he became its public face. So whenever people talk about ALS, they're linking it to Gehrig's memory.”

“If I were Lou Gehrig,” I say, “I think I would prefer to be remembered for my batting record.”

Jeff smiles and evens the edges on the stack of flyers he's holding. “Batting records come and go. But when Gehrig marched out on that field in Yankee Stadium to announce his playing days were over, he said he still considered himself to be the luckiest man on earth. He talked about the opportunities he'd had in life, the strength of his family, and finished up by saying that though he'd caught a tough break, he still had a lot to live for.”

“So he beat it!” Relief floods through my body. “I guess I was thinking it was supposed to be fatal or something.”

“Well, no,” Jeff says quickly. “I mean, you were right, this disease is always fatal. It acts progressively by destroying the motor neurons, which are the cells in the spine and the brain that control movement. Once those motor neurons are down, the brain can't communicate with the muscles anymore. So as the disease creeps through the body, those signals get weaker. And because the signals they receive keep getting weaker, the muscles can't respond as quickly or efficiently. Eventually they stop working entirely because all the motor neurons—their lines of communication—are totally shot.”

My brain shuffles through a group of images, trying to visualize his description. “So is it like trying to make a call with no bars on your phone?”

“Well, that's one way of thinking of it, yes.” He smiles.

“But wait,” I say, thinking it through for a minute. Though I barely pay attention in biology, I do remember my teacher, Mrs. Richardson, talking about how the brain controlled all movement—not just raising your arms when you want to raise your arms, but unconscious movements too. “How does someone with ALS swallow or breathe?”

“That's the problem.” I watch Jeff swallow as he considers the question and his answer. “The person's ability to think remains intact because his brain continues to work perfectly well, but once ALS destroys those neurons, the person becomes ‘locked in,' and can't do the other things on his own anymore. That's why we try to help them perform those functions with artificial means. Mr. Sands is getting the BiPAP machine because it will help pump air into his lungs as he sleeps. Apparently breathing on his own is becoming more difficult for him.”

“Oh.”
Shit
. Not the answer I was hoping for.

“It's a cruel disease and that's why Gehrig's courage was so remarkable. We're all rooting for Mr. Sands to stay that strong too.”

“Yeah.” I nod. But what I'm really rooting for is divine intervention.

“We'll give him the best care possible. That's what we do here.” Jeff runs his finger against his mustache. “You know that, Grace.”

From what people say—and from what's printed on all its promotional literature—Hanover House is supposed to be one of the best old-age homes in the Philadelphia area. It has a leafy green “campus,” and a stately, ivy-covered main building sits in the middle of it. It almost looks like one of the small colleges around here, like Haverford or Bryn Mawr. But I've always thought of the H.H. community as more of a sleep-away camp than college, especially for the healthy people who live in the cottages on the property. For them, Hanover House offers activities like art and dance classes, and occasionally they have field trips to the theater symphony, and the casinos in Atlantic City. Old people love them some casinos. Weird, but true.

What I find completely fascinating, though, is that just like in my high school, there's a social hierarchy here too. The healthy “cottage dwellers” are the cool kids, and they avoid the people in the hospital part like they're band geek losers. I rarely see the cottage people because I don't think they even want to tempt fate by walking near the hospital wing where I work; it's like they're scared they'll catch their cooties or something. The people here need full-time nursing assistance and are called the “constant care patients.” When you're assigned a bed in this unit, you're no longer a person, you're a patient. You're “terminally uncool,” as Mr. Sands says. He also says: “The only way people leave this joint is feet first.”

As it turns out, that isn't exactly true . . . a lesson learned one afternoon when Mr. Sands convinced me to help him escape.

“Grace,” he said, “I need you to help me bust out of this joint.”

The path to freedom was fairly straightforward: I was to roll his wheelchair down the hallway, out the little-used and little-observed side entrance closest to the constant care wing, then push him as fast as my legs could carry us in the direction of the local cineplex, which was showing one of his favorite classic films,
Top Gun.