Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (31 page)

I do not think I have ever been more alone.

Somehow the fact that I feel more pain over the loss of a man I’ve known for a couple of years than I did for my own father strikes me as not the least bit strange. In fact, I have to concentrate to remember Ray’s death. What year was it? Does it matter if I remember? It hardly mattered then.

Los Angeles, 1983
. “He has a large abscess in his left lung. And pneumonia. Normally we’d do a surgical procedure, but there’s no chance he’d survive that. We’re treating with an antibiotic and we’ll know more in twenty-four hours or so.”

The doctor gave my shoulder a squeeze.

He had a mustache and wore a bow tie. No white coat, no stethoscope. He looked more like a guy who made ice cream sodas at the Woolworth’s counter than a guy who specialized in death by cancer.

“Okay, well. Thank you, doctor.” I shook his hand, but instead of letting go he brought his other hand down on mine, turning my exit attempt into a sympathy sandwich.

“I believe in being honest with my patients. And their families.”

“I appreciate that, Dr.…”

“Neiberg.”

“Right, Dr. Neiberg. I certainly appreciate that.”

He continued talking as he held my hand between both of his, cupping it gently as if holding a small, wounded rodent.

“Even if he survives the infection, the MRI we took yesterday shows the cancer is working its way up his central nervous system.”

I pulled my hand away. “Jesus Christ. He was only diagnosed five weeks ago. How—”

Neiberg took a deep breath and sighed. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was about to tell me he was out of fudge ripple.

“Your father has stage-four lung cancer with metastases to the lymph nodes, spine, liver, bladder, and more than likely, by next week, the brain.”

I stood there looking past Neiberg, nodding. I stared at the nurses and orderlies and physician’s associates. “How do they decide who gets the ugly salmon-colored scrubs, who gets the purple ones, and which poor sons of bitches get stuck wearing the pastel-colored cartoon teddy bears to work?” I asked Neiberg.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I mean, is there some kind of pecking order or does it go by department? Is it just random? Luck of the draw? Matter of choice?”

Neiberg stood there for a moment blinking at me. Silent. “I … I’m afraid I can’t … I don’t really …” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Todd, even with all the pain medication, your father is fairly coherent. These next few days are going to be the last lucid ones he has. If there are things you want to say, things you want him to hear, now would be the time.”

Neiberg handed me his card and gave me one last arm squeeze.

“Call me if you have any questions. About your father.”

I walked down the carpeted hallway looking for room 401 North. This was the most expensive ward in the most expensive hospital in Los Angeles. Insurance didn’t begin to cover it. I couldn’t give two shits if Pop kicked at County, but that wouldn’t look right. Sons like me paid for their fathers to die well. So, Pop, here you are in the VIP wing at Cedars, next door to where Charlton Heston is convalescing.

401 North. I stood there for a minute deciding whether to knock or run. I pulled open the door and stepped inside. The room was bright and sunny and clean and filled with French reproduction antiques—good ones. Apart from all the medical crap, it looked like a standard double at the Four Seasons.

My father dozed in his hospital bed under Ralph Lauren sheets while monitors flashed like video games and an IV pumped him full of some milky white cocktail. His face was yellow, his stomach was distended, and his arms were just wrinkled flesh that hung from the bones. I stood there repulsed and tried to summon up some sympathy. I had resented, despised and been disappointed by my father for over thirty years.

During the years since my mother had died, my contact with Pop had gradually diminished. Now I had one, maybe two brief phone conversations with him a month—mostly at Ellen’s insistence—and saw him rarely if ever. But I paid his rent and sent a check every month. Partly for my mother’s sake and to play the good son, but mostly to remind him that I could. That I had succeeded where he had failed. He was never anything but grateful. Grateful and proud. As if he’d forgotten the first two decades of my life.

I stood around while he slept. I didn’t want to wake him, but I wanted him to know I’d been there. Otherwise what was the point? So finally I just “bumped” into the bed. Gently.

His eyes fluttered open. He looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. The good son. “Hey, Pop, how you doing?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said in a low, dry voice. He beamed at me and the guilt kicked in. “You didn’t have to come all the way across town. Traffic’s hell this time of day,” he said.

“C’mon, Pop. Don’t be silly. I
wanted
to see you. You have everything you need? Are the nurses treating you well, because I could—”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ray said and took my hand. “Sit down for a minute. Tell me about Ellen and the baby. Do you have a picture? I’d like—”

“She’s not a baby anymore, Pop.”

“Right. Sure. I guess it’s been a while. When I get outta here we should—”

Shit. They haven’t told him. Fucking Neiberg. He wasn’t putting this on me.

“Listen, Pop, I didn’t want to wake you before, and now …”

“Have you talked to the doctors, Grey? Because I can’t get a straight answer from any of ’em. This one says he’s gotta confer with that one and that one’s gotta confer with this one.”

Dammit.

“Sure, Pop. I’ll get it all straightened out,” I said, heading for the door. “I wish I could stay longer but I’ve got a meeting at three so I should probably—”

“Oh sure. Yeah. You get your ass back to the office. You got things to do.” He laughed, but it stuck in his chest. He started coughing and couldn’t stop.

I stood there and waited, but it just went on and on. Finally, I called for the nurse. She shoved past me, pushed the button to raise the back of the bed, and held a mask to his mouth. The coughing began to subside. Pop pushed the mask away and waved me out.

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” he said, smiling and coughing.

“Okay, Pop. Well, I’ll call you tonight then.” I walked out of the room backward, smiling cheerfully until I was sure he couldn’t see me.

A few days later, he died. The tagline of our relationship: He was an asshole. And then he was dying and I was an asshole.

New York, 1994
. For days after Walt’s death, I wait to hear when and where the funeral will be. I don’t go to the Pick or the video store. I don’t leave my apartment except to check the mail and the bulletin board in the lobby for some announcement about the funeral. I think maybe the super will know. But there’s nothing. And when I ask the super, all he says is, “The family is very private.”

And so, after ten days, I finally have to admit to myself that they’ve had it without me. I tear up the eulogy I spent days writing and throw it in the incinerator. I consider following behind it. A sort of cremation/self-immolation form of protest. But I can’t. Because whether by accident or design, the chute is far too small to accommodate a human body.

Ten days later, I’m collecting my mail when I see a large black Mercedes—anomalous for our little strip of Hell’s Kitchen—parked outside the building. Illegally. Ricardo the super is sitting on the stoop reading the
Post
. I jut my chin out toward the car.

“The family come to clean out Walt’s place. The son paying me to watch his car.”

While I know in theory they are within their rights, I also feel quite strongly that Walt is being violated, that only I know what was truly important to him, and that it is my duty to protect Walt from his asshole Republican, Westport, Connecticut son whom, while he didn’t come right out and say it, I know Walt hated.

And so I bolt up the three flights of stairs and let myself into the apartment with the set of keys Walt gave me.

A tiny blonde woman wearing a headband and an Hermes scarf around her neck is tossing things into garbage bags. “Oh my God!” she yells.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I yell back.

“Richard!” she screams.

“He better not have thrown away the little glass bottles,” I threaten.

“Who the hell are you?” she asks, suddenly more outraged than frightened.

Richard, tall and skinny like Walt but with none of the Jimmy Stewart charm, rushes into the room. “You must be that guy,” he says.

“What guy?”

“I think he’s that guy, honey,” Richard says to Blondie. “I told you there’d be a problem with him some way or another.”

“Which guy do you think I am, asshole? And did it ever occur to you that Walt might have friends, neighbors who would have wanted to go to his fucking funeral?”

“See?” he says, smiling smugly at his wife. “Problem.”

“The problem is you’re an inconsiderate dick, Dick, and you’re gutting Walt’s place. You have no idea what some of these things meant to him.”

“You know,” Richard says, “I could have had you arrested for signing those papers. For claiming to be me the day my father died.”

“I
never
claimed to be you,” I say with as much disdain as I can manage.

“You claimed to be his son.”

“His son, but not you. Not the same thing.”

“Is it money? Is that what he wants?” Blondie interjects.

When I realize how pointless this is, when I realize for the four hundred millionth time that Walt is gone and with him the unfamiliar feeling of safety and friendship I was just beginning not to doubt, a wave of exhaustion and grief washes over me and I stumble backward onto Walt’s couch. I let my head fall back and I close my eyes.

“Look, I understand what you’re going through.” I force my eyes open and look at him. “I didn’t give a shit about my own father either. But Dick, I gave a shit about yours.”

“Where the fuck do you get off telling me how I felt about my own father?”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t. I was extrapolating from what Walt said about you.”

Richard points toward the front door. “Get. The. Fuck. Out. Before I tell you what he said about you.”

I know he’s bluffing. He has to be. This is just sibling rivalry shit. Because I know Walt loved me more. On my way out, I walk past the kitchen. Blondie is pulling all the macaroni collages and cotton-ball snowmen off the refrigerator and stuffing them into the garbage bag. The bag is getting full. To make more room, she sticks one foot inside and steps down hard and I hear the cracking of uncooked pasta, lentils, and hardened glue.

Now I am done.

I go for days without speaking to another human being. Maybe weeks. The conversation in my head seems to suffice.

Today I woke up to discover I have become a ghost. I have disappeared. I come and go in public, in broad daylight—crossing streets against traffic, slipping in and out of nearly closed subway doors—never once getting handed a supermarket circular, discount offer, or trial membership to a gym. I have fallen off the radar. No one makes eye contact. Not with me. I am invisible. I walk among the living but exist on a different plane. Distanced, as if I am at a remove. Or rather, as if I am as if. Imaginary.

The sensation is strange. Not to feel nothing, but to feel
like
nothing. I am light and cold. I can feel the wind blow through my empty veins. I do not exert enough gravity to keep my feet on the ground. So I hover, suspended. I am somewhere between now and when, between here and just beyond where. I am halfway there. I have had enough. More than enough. But I have tried and failed to go the last mile. I have stood at the edge of the subway platform leaning into the oncoming light. And stepped back. Because I am a coward. I need help. With my exit.

So I decide to consult the experts. I flip through the yellowing yellow pages, write the address on my hand in ballpoint pen, and leave the apartment. It is cold. I don’t know what day it is. Or what season. I am not wearing a coat. I notice only because other people are. I can see them but I am certain they cannot see me. There’s nothing here to see. It has come on gradually, this apartness I feel. Little by little, thread by thread, I have been coming untethered. From things. From people. From voices and meaning.

For a long time—for as long as I could stand it—I tried to make the effort. I tried to wear the face of a functioning member of society. But when I woke up this morning, it had happened. It was done. And now, while I am not yet dead—already almost, but not quite dead—my ability to pass as living, to function among the living, is gone.

This morning I woke up a ghost. Frosty air follows me into rooms overheated by prewar radiators. And my hands—large, grey, and cold—are going numb. I must remind myself to blink. To look human.
Blink
, I think. But they know. Everybody knows. Now it is just a matter of time. And of how and where and when. Now it is a matter of getting it right. I want to get this right. So I will consult the experts.

It turns out I don’t have a lot of options when it comes to suicide advice. Prevention, sure. How-to, virtually none. But there is the New York chapter of the Hemlock Society. So, with much effort, I take myself to its small, windowless office located on the fifth floor of an ugly white limestone building on First Avenue and Thirty-Eighth Street. I’m not sure what I expected, but this cramped, dingy, fluorescent-lit, linoleum-floored hole-in-the-wall isn’t it. Frankly, it’s depressing. Then again, I suppose they don’t really care much about first impressions given their lack of repeat business.

I don’t see anyone sitting behind what appears to be the bulletproof glass that surrounds the tiny reception desk, so I ring the little bell on the white linoleum counter. The plastic at the corner has peeled back and someone—one of the Hemlock staff—has restored it with silver duct tape. I read the entire Hemlock Society brochure, find out they’re opposed to euthanasia but in favor of assisted suicide, and decide that the subtlety is lost on me but I don’t really care. What is beginning to annoy me is the fact that it’s taking so long to get any kind of assistance at all. So I knock on the bulletproof glass.