Something Right Behind Her (4 page)

“Hey, you guys,
let me open the patio up for you, so you don’t have to get that chair up the
step,” she said. “We only have six tables, so we don’t have a handicap ramp.”
She propped open the double doors that led to an alleyway where they had a few
tables set up.

“Awesome,” I
said, and we wheeled Eve up to the table. I was glad to have the patio to
ourselves since the place filled up at lunchtime with moms and little kids.
Doug and I went to order the food while Eve sat outside. I could see her taking
it all in, a faint leftsided smile on pursed lips. I thought she looked better,
like her face had regained some of its form, though I knew this had to be a
trick of the light, or stoned wishful thinking.

Then a random
thing happened. While we were standing there, looking up at the menu board,
Doug and I started holding hands. It happened, it seemed, for no reason, the
way little kids take the hand of the kid next to them. This distracted me so
bad I couldn’t figure out what the heck to eat. Finally, Doug just started
ordering stuff and I chimed in. I could feel Eve’s eyes on us, and when I
turned toward the table with our food, I knew that she’d seen us, and her look
went from one of faint amusement to something more like a warning. She narrowed
her good eye at me. It was a real don’t-fuck-up-Andy Eve sort of look. Like in
the old days. Eve liked to be the one who seemed the most in control. I
shrugged, chalking it all up to weird stoney behavior.

“Here’s one
delectable fish taco, chips, the best guacamole in New Jersey and a pineapple
smoothie. I placed the food in front of Eve, then sat down next to her and dug
into my burrito. It was cheesy and steaming and my mouth watered.

“Thanks, guys,
looks great,” Eve said, and Doug and I looked up. I could feel the salsa
dripping down my chin. In our stonedness, we’d both forgotten that Eve couldn’t
hold a fork.

“Oh, shit,” I
said, and burst out laughing. Then Doug and Eve got the giggles too, and the
three of us just sat there cracking up over the pathetic fact that Eve couldn’t
feed herself, and Doug and I were such assholes we were too busy flirting and
stuffing our faces to notice. The fact that the truth was so awful made it all
the funnier. You could see how helpless Eve was to control her laughter, with
the normal side of her face looking red-eye-stoned, and the messed up side
remaining still. I thought the side that didn’t move looked scared. It freaked
me out a little, how the dead side of her face got carried along with the good
side.

Just then, two
moms with about five kids between them came out to the patio. They looked at us
pretty funny, because who wouldn’t and then they sat kind of stiffly at their table.
One of the women, I noticed, flinched when she caught a glimpse of Eve’s
withered shoulder and bad arm.

I picked up
Eve’s taco and held it out for her, but she was still shaking and laughing and
had tears rolling down her cheeks, which I wiped away with my napkin, grateful
that she was silly-stoned.

“Here, take a
bite,” I said. “Yummy, yummy.”

She took one big
mouthful and all that sauce started dribbling down her chin and that set me off
again. I dabbed at her chin with my napkin, then gave her another huge bite,
which made us both start cracking up.

I knew at that
moment everything was as good as it possibly could be, that the pot and even
Doug being there was all right. I felt finally like I’d done what I was
supposed to do for Eve, which was to be who we always were together. Then, I
heard someone clear their throat next to me.

“I think maybe
you guys should, like, chill out, you know?” It seemed to be some sort of
manager. He was in his twenties, with a belly and longish hair. “Like, this
situation seems sort of uncool?” He looked at Eve sitting there, her red bikini
top visible under her sheer tunic, hair falling in her eyes, a fresh-faced, but
obviously sick- looking girl in a wheel chair with two very stoned-looking
companions. She pulled herself together so fast it made me think she hadn’t
inhaled.

“We’re fine,
thanks. My brother and my friend are just taking me out of the hospital for an
afternoon at the beach. Is the beach close to here?” Eve gazed at the at the
guy with her good eye like he was her knight in shining armor, and of course he
was all over that – beautiful, wheelchair-bound girl with cleavage makes
for a pretty good damsel in distress. The guy ended up giving us all sorts of
chips and stuff for the road. Eve could always snap to when necessary. She was
the one with the survival instincts.

When we got to
the bungalow I went ahead and unlocked the door, and Doug followed, carrying
Eve up the stairs through the back door. He lay Eve down on the big wicker
chair in the front room, and you could tell the view out the picture window was
already doing its work on her.

You could see
the waves were nice and glassy. Each wave carried a bunch of little kids on
brightly-colored boogie boards, and some grown men body-surfing. There were
women standing around up to their ankles with little kids rolling and stomping
in the surf. I realized then that we were on a kind of pilgrimage, and that
we’d made it.

Our house is not
much to speak of – a bungalow, with a piece of crap house next door and
just real casual furniture. As far as decorating went, Mom hung a few old straw
beach hats on the wall, stuffed a couple of pink rose bushes in the ground and
called it a day. She kept a few tomato plants, too, which all still had
tomatoes on them, which were bursting open, and beginning to go to seed. That
was always the way in September - the weather was perfect, and everything was
getting a bit run-down.

Doug seemed
pretty spent after the tacos and the dope and all. He sat down on the dingy
little blue and white striped couch, and cracked open a diet coke, but Eve was
having none of it.

“I’ve had about
enough of you two drug-addicts. You think you could pull yourselves together
and get me onto the beach we spent the whole morning trying to get to?”

“Ok, princess,”
I said. That was what I called her when she got like that. “Come on, Doug, this
is what we invited you for in the first place – to carry Her Majesty.”

“Thanks, Andy,
I’ll remember that,” Doug said, but he sort of winked when he said it, as if he
had some specific plan for retribution.

We packed up all
the crap we’d need in a couple canvas bags. The beach is about two yards from
the house, but we always pack like we’re going a mile. We got everything out
there, and got Eve’s chair from the car, and got her in it. Then we all just
stood there looking at each other, because none of us had thought about how we
were going to get her out onto the sand in her chair. We’d forgotten about that
and the fact that even if Doug carried her, she needed something other than a
flimsy beach chair to sit on. The plan, at least in my mind, had been to wheel
her right up to the water.

Doug and I were
standing there staring at the back of Eve’s head, wondering what to do, when
the badge girl suddenly looked up. “Oh, sorry,” she said, her eyes widening
with alarm. “You guys need the all-terrain chair?” Without even waiting for us
to answer, she started talking into her walkie talkie to some guy named Joe.
The next thing we knew the electric beach cart was motoring along the boardwalk
with one of those allterrain wheelchairs with the giant rubber wheels on the
back of it. There were these two fifty-something year old pot-bellied beach
patrol guys looking real heroic driving the cart along. The driver had on
shades and the helper guy had a beard and a baseball cap that said “life is
good” on it. He hopped down from the cart, and smacked Doug on the shoulder.

“Need a hand
there, son?” he said, and he went to the rear of the cart and started to roll
the big wheel chair off the back of the cart. Doug and I stood there watching
him. “Ok, son, let’s get this pretty girl set up for a day at the beach, huh?”
He had the beach chair pulled up next to Eve and he was getting ready to lift
her up. Eve shut her eyes, and her face went kind of blank, like she was
accustomed to this routine - the stranger’s touch against her body. I thought
it must be sort of like being at the dentist, the way you lie back in the chair
and pretend some madman isn’t drilling away at your mouth.

Together, Doug
and I pushed Eve through the warm sand, the big rubber wheels making it
relatively easy once we gained some momentum. We got Eve in up to her ankles
before the sand dropped off, and the water deepened, making the chair an impossibility.
By that point, we had become a bit of a spectacle. One little boy, about four
or five years old, kept trying to take the handles of the wheelchair from Doug,
as if driving the funky wheelchair were some male rite of passage. His mom was
real apologetic. She was one of those Jersey fitness moms, with giant fake
boobs, and I kept doing the cougar claw behind her back, making Eve and Doug
crack up. Finally, the mom got the kid to take her hand, and we watched as she
retreated in her tiny spotted bikini.

The lifeguard on
duty was one of the older guys. I recognized him from the summer. He wore a big
broad-rimmed hat – the sort of thing your mom might buy on a trip to
Puerto Rico, then embarrass the hell out of you by wearing it around town when
you got back. He was good-looking in that slightly weary way guys have when
they’re fighting getting a gut. I noticed he was standing up in his chair,
looking at us. He seemed to have figured out our situation and he hopped down
and walked over to us, carrying the little floaty thing the guards carry with
them on rescues. He shook hands with Doug and said hi to Eve, and introduced
himself as Bob. Eve and I had a joke when we were younger, and we scoped guys
out on the beach - we’d always call them Bob, for boy-on-the-beach. Clever, but
we were like twelve when we came up with it. I started to giggle and he nodded
in my direction, like he was this major authority figure, and I was being kind
of a bratty kid.

Bob bent down
and put his hands on his knees, so he was level with Eve. “If you want to go
in, I’ll take you as far as you want to go, ok?” He was super-serious, as if he
knew something we didn’t. Eve nodded weakly, more like just tipping her head to
the left, and he strapped the torpedo thing across his body, and picked her up.
She couldn’t hold onto him, so he placed her arms close to her sides and held
her like an infant, legs dangling.

The ends of her
hair caught the sunlight and lay in golden wisps on Bob’s shoulder. I was
shocked by how small she looked in Bob’s arms, how her arms were like a
child’s. It made my throat feel tight, the sight of her being carried like
that, with her hair the only part of her that moved.

Bob carried Eve
into the water until he was almost up to his chest. They somehow made it
through the break, and he was swimming her over the tops of the waves. Her hair
was wet, and slicked back away from her face. At one point, she went under a
large, gentle wave and Bob held her close to his chest. It was like the water
was made for Eve that day, with those glassy waves, and clear almost Caribbean-looking
ocean.

“I didn’t think
he’d take her under,” Doug said. “I mean holy shit!” I turned to look at him,
and I could see that, beneath his sunglasses, his eyes were moist. I reached
for his hand, and he took mine. “Jesus fucking Christ, Andy, Jesus fucking
Christ,” was all he said, and I knew he was no longer just talking about Eve
being in the water, or us watching her. It was one of those moments, when
everything becomes real.

When Bob placed
Eve back in her chair, she began to shiver, and I went and got some dry towels.
When I got back, her lips were turning kind of blue, but you could see that she
was calm. She searched out Bob’s gaze with her good eye. ‘Thanks,” she said.
“That was beautiful. The water was so clear, I could see the bottom. I could
see the crabs, and there were bluefish, I think. I didn’t realize there was so
much down there!” She chuckled as if her faith in the Jersey Shore had been
restored by the sight of a few crabs, as if the point of being carried out
there in Bob’s capable arms had been to see some marine life. Clearly, she was
invigorated. “People are always saying the water is so dirty down here. They’ve
been saying the same things since we were kids – that the oceans are
dying, but I don’t think they are. Not anymore.” She looked at Bob for
confirmation.

“No,” he said,
and his voice sort of thickened at that point, “Nope, as far as I can tell,
they’re coming back.” He sounded casual, but convincing. Then he stood up and
shook hands with Doug again. We all stared after him as he walked away, climbed
into his chair, and assumed his watchful pose. Eve got kind of a mischievous
look in her eye then, and at first I thought she’d say something mocking, like
she didn’t buy Bob’s heroic act. But then I realized it wasn’t Bob she thought
could be toyed with. It was the disease that had already claimed so much of her
that she seemed to be mocking. It was like by going in the water, under the
green-blue waves, she had cheated it, finally. She had taken something back
from the ALS, from the disease that had, so far, always won.

We spent a
couple more hours on the beach, then had to begin the whole wheelchair and
packing up routine again. “I’ll go get us a pizza,” Doug said. I told him to go
to Rocco’s, the place down the boardwalk that sold beach crap, and had
surprisingly decent pizza. I was a little annoyed that he didn’t suggest that
we all stroll down there. It was like he wanted to get away from us all of a
sudden, like he was just the older brother, and we were a burden on him.