Home Is Burning (16 page)

My parents had purchased the ECO before I came home, but they hadn't figured out how to get it up and running. It was a bit esoteric. So my dad, Greg, and I took the device down to this geek named Bart at the place where they bought it. Bart knew everything there was to know about the ECO, just like I knew everything there was to know about wiping my dad's ass. He was a prototypical nerd: bacon breath, glasses, an autodidact, referred to computers as “her,” full of McAfee antivirus jokes, way happier than I'll ever be. But the geek knew his communication devices, so meeting with him was the only way we were going to learn how to get Stephen Hawking to call my mother a racial epithet.

At the time we went to see Bart, my dad looked like a walking skeleton. He was getting lots of Jesus-Christ-that-guy-looks-like-he's-about-to-die looks from strangers. Utah is an especially tragic backdrop for physical decay because it's filled with a bunch of smiling Mormons pretending life is perfect. Their cheery demeanor only seemed to amplify the bleakness of my dad's situation. The tricky part about taking my dad anywhere was that we couldn't stay long. He needed to get back to the BiPAP machine, where we all felt he had a reduced chance of dying. Plus, Greg or my dumb ass would always forget to bring things like extra Kleenex or a change of pants in case God sent us an angel in the form of a diarrhea shit. The Promote made him constipated, so my dad had started taking a laxative with his morning feedings, which turned him into a real shit monster.

We rang the bell and asked for Bart. He was in the back room training for the Doritos-eating contest my imagination had entered him in. They took us to a large room in the back of the building that was filled with computers. Bart didn't move from his chair. I guess laziness can be as crippling as Lou Gehrig's disease.

“Hey, Bob,” said Bart as he reached to shake my dad's hand, but then remembered that he couldn't move his arms and settled for a shoulder pat. “You got the ECO-14, right?” My dad nodded his head as much as he could. Conversations were pretty awkward now, very one-sided. “Great device. Let's take a look at her.”

Bart poked around the screen for a bit, cracking a couple antivirus jokes, before realizing that we had put the computer in the wrong mode. What dumb-asses. He tickled the screen back into submission and set it up so that an alphabet appeared.

“That was easy,” Bart said like a hotshot, a booger hanging from his left nostril.

We began playing with it. I started to type in “Greg is gay,” but stopped after the “ga” to write “gallant” instead. Greg responded by starting to type “Dan is fat,” but stopped after the “fa” to write “fantastic at basketball.” We decided to get my dad involved in the joke, so I started to type “My dad is dying,” but dropped after the “d” and wrote “dandy.” He managed a slight smile.

In other words, we were quickly learning how to fuck around with the thing.

But I wanted to get into funnier options—things like changing the speaker's voice to a woman's, or to a very deep-voiced black man's. I pictured my dad speaking with Karl Malone's Louisianan twang and laughed.

“I wanted to be traded yesterday, but don't today. I've done a complete three-sixty,” I imagined my dad saying through the computer as Karl Malone.

We couldn't screw around too much, though. We were here to learn, and, as I mentioned, we never knew when diarrhea would slide into the picture.

“How do we change the voice?” I asked.

This machine was replacing our dad's voice, so we tried to find one that sounded sort of like his, but it was difficult. They were all very computery—a chorus of bad first dates, each with a name and gender. There was “Will,” who sounded like he had a bad cold. There was “Rod,” who was a little too chipper. We didn't want my dad to sound too excited about having ALS. There was “Micah,” who sounded like a tired donkey. There was “Saul,” who seemed to have been pulled out of a meth den. We finally settled on “Mike,” whose voice was a little softer than the others, the most normal from the list.

“Fuck my anus, you heavy-cocked whore,” Mike's voice said in my head.

We also wanted to know how to preprogram buttons to say certain things, so my dad didn't have to go through the arduous task of spelling everything out one letter at a time.

“Oh, you mean Quick Hits?” asked Bart. “Go into the toolbar here and push Modify Page, then select the button on the page you wish to modify. And then you just type in whatever you want said. You can also change the icon using this picture option here and type in whatever you want it to say. Let's try one. How about we do one that says, ‘Hello, my name is Bob Marshall'?”

“Stupid,” I wanted to say.

“Sure, Bart, let's try that one,” I actually said.

“Hello, my name is Bob Marshall,” Mike boasted.

Right as we were programming the second Quick Hit, my dad leaned in and notified us that he needed to leave, that he was about to shit his pants, that maybe we could come back later. So we raced home. Greg handled the shitting and put my dad down for a nap. I went straight to the device to work on some more amazing Quick Hits.

“Fuck my anus, you heavy-cocked whore,” Mike said, finally letting me get that out of my system. Relief washed over me, as if I were a heroin addict finally getting his fix. With that out of the way, I started to think of practical things my dad would actually need to say. So I started programming.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Can you move my arm?”

“I need a nap. Can you help me with that?”

“I need to go to bed.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Could you scratch my back?”

“I'm hungry. Can you feed me?”

“I need some water.”

At this point, I was bored out of my mind with this bottom-of-Maslow's-hierarchy-of-needs bullshit. So, I started to ease into funnier, more risqué quips.

“The dogs are barking. Can you get them to shut up?”

“Please don't smoke around me. My lung capacity is at eighteen percent, you inconsiderate asshole.”

“Don't look at me. I am not a monster.”

“How am I doing? I have Lou Gehrig's disease. How do you think I'm doing? Unbelievable.”

“If you loved me, you would put three shots of gin into my feeding tube.”

“Please give me five dollars. I have Lou Gehrig's disease and you can still do all the things you love.”

“There's a knife downstairs. Please kill me.”

I also thought my dad would probably want to thank me, so I programmed a few ways he could express his appreciation.

“Thanks for all your help, Danny. You are the single best thing that's happened to this family.”

I then did one that was a slight alteration to Lou Gehrig's famous speech at Yankee Stadium back in 1939.

“For the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth, especially since Danny is my son.”

But saying “thank you” isn't funny compared to something sexual. Because sex is funny, right? I continued to program.

“Wow, that was a great round of sex. Let me rest for five minutes and we'll go for round two.”

“Boy, I could use a blow job.”

I placed a picture of a limp penis as the icon for the “blow job” button and a picture of a vagina for the “sex” button.

After a couple hours of programming my nuts off like a little Bart wannabe, my dad finished his nap. I brought him down to sit in the kitchen—the heart of our house. He had always sat at the head of the table. He was still the man of the house, the head of the pride. I wanted to show him all the quick hits I had programmed.

“And this is if you need to go to the bathroom,” I said, hitting the bathroom button to cue Mike's voice.

It didn't take long before my dad noticed the limp penis dangling halfway down the screen. He pointed with his nose at the penis icon, and cleared his throat enough to speak. “What's that one? The penis?”

“Oh, this little guy?” I smiled, anticipating the payoff for my programming labors.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

You can't laugh when you have Lou Gehrig's—it's one of the rules—but you
can
call over your wife and tell her to listen to or watch something, signifying that something is funny. So my dad called for my mom, who ghosted to the table in a nightgown, a yogurt in her hand, her permanent frown intact. I clicked again.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

Her permanent frown flatlined, her version of a smile. When you've had cancer for fifteen years, you can't laugh—it's one of the rules. But you can call over your daughter. Chelsea came over.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

Chelsea erupted with laughter and asked what a blow job was. She was too obsessed with dance and school to know anything about sex. Jessica entered from the TV room and asked what was so funny.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

She smiled. Being a popular seventeen-year-old, Jessica knew what a blow job was. Greg walked downstairs next, having just woken from his daily nap. He was wearing a robe and heading straight for the fridge. I told him to listen up.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

Greg was well versed in both giving and receiving blow jobs, so this really hit home with him. He chuckled as he made himself a giant plate of lasagna.

Tiffany entered through the front door, making a rare appearance, and set her keys, coat, and cell phone down on the kitchen counter.

“Hey, guys. What are you up to?” asked Tiff.

“We're just fucking around with Dad's new communication device. Check it out,” I said.

CLICK. “Boy, I could use a blow job.”

Even Tiffany managed a smile.

I noticed that the whole family was here. The past few years had pulled us in different directions, so it was hard to find a moment where we were all together, even under these our-parents-are-dying circumstances. And when we were together, we were always at each other's throats. This was one of those rare moments that we weren't. Everything seemed right again. Sure, the situation was different. We weren't all together on a family vacation sitting by the pool in Palm Desert applying sunscreen and reading Dan Brown novels. But Dad was back at the head of the table—in the heart of the house, his little bald wife by his side, his children resting their hands on his shoulder. We all took in the moment. I knew my dad wanted to stand up and give a Lou Gehrig–esque speech.

“We have been through a lot over the years. We have recently encountered an unprecedented amount of bad luck that all decided to hit at once. Shit has piled up pretty deep. But we are all still here
now
and I want you to always be there for each other, to be part of one another's lives, because when it comes down to it, family is all that you have, and all that's truly important in life. I love you all very much and am so proud that you are my family,” I imagined him saying.

But there was no way he could rouse such a benediction from his weak body. Mike spoke for him now. I turned the device over to him.

“Go ahead, Dad. Say whatever you want,” I said.

With all his remaining strength, he lifted one of his long, pointy fingers and hit a button.

“Boy, I could use a blow job.”

 

CANCER COMEDIAN

My dad was a morning person. Before the Lou Gehrig's disease, he'd get up around six and go for a long run. Then he'd come home, sit outside in our gazebo looking up at the Wasatch Mountains with a cup of coffee and listen to the world wake up. He'd thumb through the
Salt Lake Tribune
, reading more than just the sports and entertainment sections, unlike the rest of us dumb-shit philistines. He'd think about what he'd done yesterday and what he had to do today. It was his alone time before his wife and kids flooded his life with activity and useless drama.

But now, my dad always had someone with him. No more alone time for Bobby Boy. His whole focus was survival. He'd wake up with a breathing mask velcroed to his narrow face. He'd ring his doorbell so whichever one of his loser sons was on Daddy Duty could sit him up and take off his mask. Then, once he caught his breath, we'd help him piss, shit, shower, and dress. It was a far cry from running through our neighborhood streets and sipping coffee alone with his thoughts and the mountain view.

On this morning, I was the loser son on Daddy Duty. Greg was still asleep, probably dreaming of feeding a naked Chris O'Donnell some lasagna. I had actually managed to get Jessica up and out the door to school, so she and Chelsea were gone. My dad was dressed and showered, his thinning hair slicked to the side in my attempt to make him appear as if everything was in order. We were going to go down to his office to get some work done, but he needed breakfast first. He sat at the end of our big kitchen table in front of a cup of coffee. Though he couldn't drink coffee anymore, he still liked the smell, so I'd pour him a cup. It meant morning to him.

“Ready to load more shit and piss into your dying body?” I asked as I approached with three cans of Promote and some Miralax to be injected into his murky feeding tube. This was his new coffee. He managed a slight smile.

I sloppily loaded the Promote into him. I'd always try to feed him as quickly as possible, because I'm an impatient person. Some of the Promote dripped on the floor. Our oblivious dogs lapped it up with their big, ass-licking golden retriever tongues. We always made small talk during these feedings, usually about the Jazz or the stock market. But he and my mom had paid a visit to their shrink, Robin, yesterday, so I figured that I'd ask him about that. I was a psychology major, so I was always really intrigued by therapy.

“How'd it go with old Robin yesterday? What'd you talk about?” I asked.