I Had to Say Something (14 page)

Crap. All those conversations about escorting and brothers and motorcycles! He was in love with me. I was sure of it. The final proof was how desperate he was to keep seeing me, at all costs.

God, was I tired.
Of everything.
My mother was going to have surgery out in Las Vegas, and I didn't have a good feeling about it. In fact, I wasn't getting a good feeling about anything.

I suddenly saw Art as a storm that was brewing. He had fallen for me, and it appeared that he wasn't going to leave me alone. Ever.

John Fogerty, writing back in his Credence Clearwater Revival days, had gotten the words just right for the feelings that haunted me.

Then I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe Art just wanted to keep seeing me because he felt he could trust me. He knew I wouldn't fall in love with him, and that gave him the safe distance he needed to explore his sexual frontiers without really having to confront his homosexuality. Maybe all he wanted to do was play around and be my buddy.

How confusing. The main reason I wanted to keep seeing Art was because he was a good customer who paid what he owed and required little maintenance. It wasn't like I had to work all that hard to keep him happy.

CHAPTER 6

By 2003, when I first started seeing Art, my mom's calls to me almost always ended in tears. She and my dad had moved to Las Vegas in 1993, and at first she had loved her new life, working at the Golden Nugget Casino, making new friends wherever she went. But she started having stomach pain a few years later, and the doctors never figured out what was wrong with her, not until almost the very end. Meanwhile, both her parents, who'd moved to Vegas when she did, died in 2000. After that, her pain kept getting worse. I gave her as much comfort as I could over the phone. She would say she loved me, and I would say I loved her. She never told me much about her fears, and I never told her much about mine.

Just about the time Art started using meth before every visit, my parents flew back to Denver for my niece's high school graduation. My mother was in pain, but it was tolerable. Mom and Dad spent a few nights with me that visit. One evening we were at my dining room table playing cards when, all of a sudden, she doubled over. The pain was sharp and terrifying, but the incident was short. We wanted to take her to the emergency room, but she refused. Within an hour, she was still in pain, but she was back to normal.

When she returned to Las Vegas, her pain grew worse. Her appetite was dwindling. Some days, she wouldn't eat a thing.
We all knew there was a big problem when my mother did not feel like eating.

She kept going back to the doctor. He would run tests, but they would all come back negative. It was probably just an infection, they told her over and over again. They would send her home with some pain pills and told her not to go to work for a few days.

“Mikey, I'm in so much pain,” she would cry over the phone. “They don't know what's wrong with me!”

All I could do was tell her that everything would be fine and that she had to keep pressing the doctors for more tests and more information. One time, I finished a call with her just as Art was showing up for a session. It was about that time that I began praying. I was in midprayer when Art and his big smile greeted me at my door.

 

One afternoon just before the arrival of a client, I got a call from my younger brother, Terry. Mom had been taken to the emergency room with stomach pain and other problems. He gave me some of the details but did not indicate that I needed to fly out to Vegas right away. I asked him to keep me posted. As you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about her.

A few days later, Terry called me again, this time to tell me that Mom needed surgery. Then he told me to prepare myself for what he was going to say next. I took a seat on the couch. The doctors had learned that the blockage Mom had was actually “a cancerous tumor.”

I wasn't surprised. It made perfect sense that her pain all these years was caused by something as strong and serious as cancer. Finally learning the truth hit me right in the gut, as hard as if someone had punched me in the stomach.

By this point, my mother had already been in the hospital
for a week. I told my brother I'd be in Vegas as quickly as I could. I cancelled all the appointments I had for the next few days. For those clients I couldn't reach, I left a recording on my voice mail explaining that I would be out of town due to a family emergency.

 

I can't believe it
, I said to myself over and over on the plane. Cancer is such an ugly word. No matter how prepared you think you are, it still hits you like a train. Mom was always blessed with good health. Her mother lived to be eighty-six and her grandmother, my Nanny, lived to be eighty-seven. Cancer was in our bloodline, but it was odd that it would show up in my mother while she was still in her sixties.

I said a prayer on the plane. I wasn't praying to anyone or anything in particular. I was just praying, praying for a miracle. It was odd, to say the least. I started wondering what my life would be like without my mother. That was even odder.

Two surgeries were performed on my mother that time, one on her colon and the other on her bladder. They removed what they could, but the doctors told us they were unsure if they'd gotten all the cancer.

I hated seeing her curled up in a fetal position, shaking with fear and pain. She was shell-shocked. I couldn't do anything for her. Now it seemed that no one could do anything for her. She was heavily medicated, but that may have given us more peace than it gave her.

“Get some sleep,” I whispered to her, stroking her brittle hair.

She kept trying to stay awake to enjoy every moment she could. I knew she wanted to get up and walk. In fact, she wanted to get up and walk out of the hospital. The sedatives were strong, however, so after a few hours of fighting the medication, she ultimately relented and fell asleep. Other than
chemotheraphy, there was little that could be done, we were told. Holding her hand and being with her was apparently all I could do. After a few more days in the hospital, Dad and I took her home.

 

“Did you hear the one about . . . ?”

The next time I saw her was a few months later. I was pleased to see Mom try to laugh again. She struggled through to the punch line of a simple joke. It was difficult to watch. But at least she was trying. Maybe the chemo pills were working. Maybe my prayers were being answered.

She had to get her blood drawn every other week. The pain seemed to be increasing. I admired her ability to smile through it all. She still had her fighting spirit. I kept wishing and hoping and praying that she would beat the cancer.

Six months later we got a heartbreaking call from Mom's oncologist. It was Christmas 2004, and I was in Vegas with my parents. The doctor's words are still vivid in my mind: “The pills are not working, and the cancer is advancing.” She would have to start intravenous chemotherapy.

My mother and I sat and cried while Dad waited in the hall. We just couldn't understand. She looked like she was doing better. She felt better, sort of. Intensive chemotherapy would leave her frail and weak, and there was no guarantee that it would halt the cancer's spread. I might have tried to talk her out of the heavy-duty chemo, but by that point she'd had enough talk. She needed some positive reinforcement, so I gave her as much of that as I could.

All this was especially hard for my father. The man who barely showed any emotion suddenly found himself overflowing with emotion. I feared it would kill him, but to the contrary, it helped release what he had been bottling up his
whole life. Now he would cry and not be ashamed of it. How ironic. My mother's illness strengthened him. Suddenly, my father is telling me every day how much he loves me and how proud he is of me. That was great, but it pissed me off as well. Why did it take a tragedy like this to knock him out of his self-imposed straitjacket?

I spent a few more days with my folks and then flew back to Denver for New Year's Eve, though I did nothing but stay home and cry over my mother. She called me a few days later to tell me that she and Dad had decided to move to California. Several years earlier, my brother Terry had moved to southern California to get married. Given how intense Mom's new chemotherapy would be, they felt they should be closer to family.

“Whatever you do, I will support you,” I told her over the phone. I liked that they would be closer to Terry, but I feared the stress another move would cause. It was too late, though. They were already preparing to be in California by the end of January 2005.

I flew to California every other month. Each time, she was noticeably weaker and thinner. She still had a strong spirit, though. When I visited, she couldn't wait to put on some makeup, grab her purse, and go somewhere. Sometimes she could handle an entire afternoon out and about. Sometimes she'd make it to the car but be too sick to leave the driveway. I was spending time with her and that made me feel good. When she was awake, we talked and laughed. I'd fix her hair or give her a massage. I spent a lot of money that year on travel, and it was all worth it.

 

In October 2005, we all took a day trip to one of the local Indian casinos. It wasn't Vegas and the Golden Nugget, but we hoped it would bring her back to life. All the loud bells,
flashing lights, and the smell of winning in the air would make her come alive. We got her a hotel room just in case she needed to rest.

I had been praying more and more throughout the year, and my prayers were becoming less free spirited and more traditional. As my brother was checking in for us, Mom and I waited in the hotel lobby. I told Mom I would be right back and stepped just a few yards away from her.

I wanted badly to see some joy on her face, but I felt so helpless by that point. I've never been religious, but watching my mother deteriorate had rekindled my spiritual side. I found myself praying for a miracle.

You could tell she was struggling to walk. Carefully placing one foot in front of the other as I held her by her arm, she smiled as she approached an open seat at a table. The seats at these tables are high, and it took us a minute to get her into the chair. With all the strength she could muster, she got in without my having to lift her up. She quickly placed her bet so she could be included in the next hand. I stood behind her with my hand on her shoulder as I watched her play.

Three-card poker is just like the five-card variety, only with two fewer cards. You can get a flush, a straight, a straight flush, a pair with a high card, or, ideally, three of a kind. The game moves a little faster, too. Mom was aglow, the first time I'd seen her so animated in more than a year.

Her style was to look at only one card at a time. Sometimes she wouldn't look at any of the other two cards. On one memorable hand, the first card she drew was a king. That was good enough for her. She did not look at the other two cards,
but indicated to the dealer that she was still in the game by putting her chips on the cards that were facedown.

Next, it was time for the dealer to turn up the player's hands. Talk about a minor miracle. Mom had three kings, and that made her bet worth about $450. At that moment, I felt that my prayer had been answered. She got very excited. She was smiling and laughing, and you could see the life come back to her entire body. I was so happy I started crying.

Yet after a couple of minutes, she started having pain in her stomach again. The grief on her face was plain to see. She wanted to keep playing, but she just couldn't. “Mikey, I'm tired,” she said. “Can we go to the room so I can rest a bit?”

We took our time getting to the room, taking each step carefully. She was still holding on to her winning chips. Once inside, she inched her way to the bed and collapsed on it. She wanted to sleep but couldn't. The look on her face said that she feared not waking up. I sat by her and held her hand. She asked me to turn on the television for her. Every huckster in Southern California seemed to be on, each one selling something you couldn't be without. She'd closed her eyes but never really fall asleep. Looking closely at my mom's face, I could see the change. Her youth was gone. There was no vibrancy. I wasn't sure what was left, if anything.

Before long, she sat up, full of energy again. “Mike, we sure as hell can't win any money up here in this room.” So back down to the casino we went. We played poker for a few more hours but didn't hit any more winning hands. As she played, I could see how tired she was getting, but she did not want to give in to it. “It's okay, Mom,” I told her. “Let's go home. We'll come back another day.” She held on to my arm as we walked out to the car.