God is in the Pancakes (6 page)

W
hen I get to the volunteers' office on Tuesday I see I've been assigned to magazine duty on the new weekly schedule, so I load the mags in my book bag and start walking the corridors. Celebrity magazines get a bad rap in my opinion. I understand that they're not particularly intellectual or enlightening, but sometimes I think they're better than that. Sometimes they provide even what a “great book” can't: instantaneous escape. True, I've always had a weakness for celebrity gossip, but I only realized how important it could be when I started working at Hanover House. One of the candy striper's jobs is “magazine detail,” and armed with stories of teen idols, baby bumps, reality show scandals, starlet diets, and divorces, we hand out the latest editions to residents and their families. Sometimes people turn their noses up when I offer them, but mostly folks seem to be happy to be provided with something new to talk about and something mindless to focus on—particularly when it's someone else's problems. So if these magazines help them laugh at someone rich and famous, someone who seems to have it all when they themselves are losing it, I think that's worth far more than the subscription price.

I purposefully leave Mr. Sands's room for last since I still haven't gotten the chance to tell him what I'd decided and to make him agree to hang on and fight. And this way, once I finish handing out the magazines, I can spend the rest of my shift with him.

I run through the rounds as quickly as I can, practically throwing copies of
Us Weekly, Life and Style,
and
Star
at people paperboy style. When I finally exhaust my supply, I head for Mr. Sands's room. “Hey!” I say, striding into the Sands Castle
.
But when I see him, I stop short: Mr. Sands is lying in bed with tubes sticking in and out of his arms and around his nose and neck.

“Grace, look at what they've done to me,” he says softly, his voice sounding nasal. Then he laughs a bit and I can tell he's trying to keep things light.

“Who's responsible for this?” I point to the clear-colored tubing encircling him. “Because it looks like the work of Spider-Man!”

“Just the nurses,” he says. “I think they were trying to teach me a lesson.”

Smiling, I lean in conspiratorially. “You've really got to stop harassing them.”

“Party pooper.”

I pull up a chair to his bed and sit down. “I tried to stop by last week because I wanted to talk to you, but you were having a procedure done. You feeling okay?”

“Well, I'm better now that you're here, honeybunch.” He smiles, his voice still quiet. “And I have a feeling I know what you want to talk about. Why don't you close the door?”

I nod, suddenly nervous, latch the door closed, and lean against the wall next to Mr. Sands's bed. “Yeah,” I say, unsure of how to start but knowing this is something I don't want to joke about. “So that thing you asked me to help you with last week?”

“Yes,” he replies.

“Um, yeah. I just—” My mouth is dry, but when I swallow, it doesn't help. I just feel my throat moving up and down. Actually having to do this face-to-face is much harder than just rehearsing it to myself, and for the first time with Mr. Sands, the words aren't coming naturally to me. Nothing feels natural about this at all. I try again: “So the thing is, I don't really think what you asked me to do is a good idea.” I pause, waiting for him to jump in. He doesn't. “I mean, you've got to keep fighting because you just never know when they may find a cure for you.”

His expression changes only slightly, like he'd been steeling himself for this response. “It was a mistake,” he replies.

I exhale. “Okay, so you don't think it's a good idea anymore either, do you? I mean, you don't want to—” I struggle even to say the word.

“No, I haven't changed my mind about that, honey. Death doesn't scare me. It's the living hell that comes before it that does . . .” Mr. Sands trails off. “But fear got the better of me when I asked you to help me. It was weak. Terribly weak of me,” he says. “I shouldn't have burdened you with this—I can't tell you how sorry I am that I did. All of this is just making me crazy. I'm losing it, Gracie. I'm losing . . . everything.”

“But anything can happen.” I'm nodding rapidly, as if trying to erase the look of desperation painted on Mr. Sands's face. “Things can change.”

“I'm glad you think that, I really am.” There's resignation in his tone. “But, if you have those pills on you, you can just tuck the envelope in the top drawer of my nightstand. And then let's just try to forget this, okay?”

I don't know what else to say, so I unzip the front pocket of my book bag and remove the envelope. Then I open the drawer and slide the envelope to the very back, under a few old magazines and assorted clippings.

“That's fine,” he says after I close the drawer and turn back to him. “Now tell me some good news, honeybunch, I could use it.”

“Good news . . . good news . . .” I have to think about this for a moment since nothing particularly cheery springs to mind, and I'm still feeling the sting that I've failed Mr. Sands. “Oh, okay, well, this is sort of funny. My mom got really pissed at me the other night because I didn't sort the recyclables and she got a ticket from the Sanitation Department. She was so mad, I thought her head was going to explode.”

“Grace,” Mr. Sands says, and from the fatherly tone of his voice, it's clear he doesn't approve. But he doesn't scold, he just leaves it at that.

When I leave Hanover House that afternoon, I head directly for the Fulton Pharmacy. As soon as I buy the package of M&M'S I've been craving, I start loading them into my mouth like I'm filling a Pez dispenser. I can't stop thinking about the food they brought to him as I was leaving. Mr. Sands's meal—if you can call it that—was an assortment of variously colored mush, shaped to resemble a slice of meatloaf, a helping of peas, mashed potatoes, and applesauce. As we watched the nurse set the tray in front of him he shot me a “get me the hell out of here!” glance. Who could blame him?

I do my best to focus only on the M&M'S. I don't want to think about the destruction of Mr. Sands's motor neurons. I don't want to think about full body paralysis. And I don't want to think about the brave dead baseball player who set the “right” example for dealing with the disease.

It's past dusk as I ride down Shrader Lane. The street, chockablock with row homes—none of which looks particularly inviting in the daytime—seems even more intimidating in the fading light. I ring the doorbell of Eric's house and open the screen door expecting him to come bounding down the stairs—as if he'd somehow sense my arrival. But instead it's Eric's mother who answers.

“Well hello, hello!” she says warmly. “Come on in, Grace, I didn't know Eric was expecting you.”

“Actually, he isn't,” I reply. “I'm just kind of dropping by.”

“Eric's been playing video games upstairs for the past several hours, so some human contact will do him good. He nearly killed me when I interrupted to tell him Chelsea Roy was on the phone waiting for him to pick up.”

“That's funny,” I say, more surprised by Chelsea's call than Eric's reaction.

Mrs. Ward smiles and it's not hard to see where Eric gets his looks from. She doesn't wear much makeup or anything, but I have a feeling if she got all glammed out she could be movie star pretty. Plus she has this amazing chestnutty-red hair, which might be natural or could just as easily come from a box, but whichever it is, I'm going to try to duplicate it the next time I experiment.

“Go on up,” she says. “Oh, and Grace, have you had dinner? Do you want to bring a snack up there for yourself?”

“I'm good, thanks, Mrs. Ward,” I reply, holding out my bag of M&M'S to her. “You want some?”

“I shouldn't,” she says with a frown, “I'm trying to be good.”

“Being good's overrated,” I say, and she laughs.

I knock on Eric's door and when he doesn't answer, I walk in anyway. Just as expected, he's staring at his screen, headphones on, mouth slightly open, deep in the puzzle-plagued land of Zelda.

“Hey.” I tap him on the shoulder.

Eric jumps slightly at my touch. “Oh, hey,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. “What's up?”

“You ever heard of Lou Gehrig?” I say, flopping down on his bed and staring up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, sure. Why?” Eric asks, briefly turning around to look at me.

“You know about that disease he had?”

“Lou Gehrig's disease?”

“Good guess. So what do you know about it?”

“Well, I've
heard
of it, but that's about it,” he says, turning back to the screen to make sure neither he nor his princess meets with his own untimely fate.

I lie back on his bed and stare at the light fixture in the center of his ceiling. A gross number of dead bugs have collected in the glass bubble. “You know you should really clean that light out,” I say. “It's bug hell up there.”

“I prefer to think of it as atmosphere,” he replies.

“So did you read the next chapter in
As You Like It
yet?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.” I wait to get Eric's attention, but when I look at the screen, I can see he's at a level he doesn't usually get to, and that his house would pretty much have to be burning down to get him to stop playing at this point. I might get a reaction if I asked about
Chelsea
, but instead I get off the bed and stand behind him. I hover over his chair and put my hands on its arms. As I take a breath, I inhale the scent of his soap. I close my eyes and lean closer. The smell is familiar, but what I'm feeling is not. The closeness makes my skin tingle.

“Hey, come on,” he laughs sensing my proximity, and bats his hand behind him. “You trying to throw off my game?”

I don't move. I don't want to move. What occurs to me at that moment is that what I really want to do is just lean against Eric. I want him to put his arms around me. I want him to tell me everything's going to be okay. And I don't want him to let go.

“Grace, seriously,” he says, his shoulders tensing. Though he's not facing me, I know Eric's not looking at the screen anymore either, because when I look forward, the hero, Link, is just standing in the woods, no longer moving, also appearing uncertain of his next move.

“Sorry.” I quickly back away, trying to recover. “I guess I'm still a little shaky from being at Hanover House.” I sit down on the edge of the bed and prop my elbows on my knees.

Eric finally puts the game on pause and turns to look at me. “Why? What happened?”

“Well, that resident I always talk about, Mr. Sands—”

“The guy who taught you how to play cards?”

“Yeah. So he's the one with Lou Gehrig's disease, and I think he's really starting to go downhill.”

“How much time does he have left?”

“Don't know.” I shake my head. “The only thing they do know is that he's just going to get worse and worse, and they can't do anything to stop it.”

“That sucks. I'm sorry, Grace.”

I consider telling Eric what Mr. Sands asked me to do, and I wonder how he would respond. But I decide not to say anything—to him or anyone else—because I think it would be like telling someone's most personal secret, which is the last thing I'd want to do. It would also expose him to other people's judgments, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. This is about what Mr. Sands wants.

“Yeah,” I say, my stomach knotted with a variety of feelings, “I'm sorry too.”