What Binds Us (20 page)

Dondi opened his eyes abruptly, wrenched from sleep by the effort to breathe. His blind eyes tried vainly to focus. “T?”

“I’m here.”

He stretched out his hand in the direction of my voice. I took it.

Looking into his ruined eyes, I tried not to cry. “How do you feel?”

“Awful. How do I look?”

“Ghastly.”

“That’s…what I thought.”

“Would you like something to eat?”

He frowned. “God, no.” Then he smiled. “Miss Otis regrets that she will be unable to lunch today.”

I laughed as I changed his IV bag. He recognized the sound and asked, “I don’t suppose that’s a martini?”

“I love you,” I said.

“I know.”

His trembling hand reached again for mine.

“What, Dondi? What do you want?”

“I want to die by the sea.”

***

The trip was made in-state. Dondi, sedated but stable, traveled in an ambulance, preceded by a motorcycled police escort. Matthew and I followed in the Stutz, Matthew thin-lipped and anxious beside me. Marquis was in the ambulance with Dondi. Colin and Portia had taken the helicopter to West Claw to make sure the house was ready to receive our grim party.

“One of us should have ridden in the ambulance with him,” Matthew said suddenly.

“There wasn’t enough room. You know that. Besides, Marquis is with him. He’s not alone.”

“One of us should be with him,” he repeated stubbornly.

When I took his hand it was cold as ice.

Dondi awoke. His blind eyes swung around the room, searching for me.

“I’m here,” I told him.

“Who else is here?” he asked, struggling to sit up.

“No one. It’s just us.”

He lay back against the pillow. “You know, I always thought if I was blind all I would see was black. I was wrong. I see blue—a beautiful peacock blue. If I could only see one color, I would choose this blue.”

“Do you mind it very much? Being blind, I mean.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t. I’ve been asking myself what I would want to see if I could have my sight restored for just five minutes. All I long to see is your face.”

I said nothing but brought his hand to my face. His tickling fingers danced over my skin. I fought hard not to cry. He removed his hand.

“I loved you, you know,” he said.

“Hush, you’re talking nonsense.”

“No. I really did love you.”

“Then…why—”

“Because I loved you, I wanted the best for you. That wasn’t me. You brought out the best in me, but that wasn’t good enough. You are God’s gift to the faithful. Matthew deserved you. He believed in love.”

“So did you. You believed you loved me.”

“Perhaps I didn’t believe I could be loved in return. Or I didn’t want to be loved. I didn’t want the responsibility.”

“I could have saved you.”

“Because you loved me?”

I nodded, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see. Then I remembered. “Yes.”

“No, you couldn’t have. No one can save anyone else. I loved David, yet my love wasn’t strong enough to save him.”

“David didn’t die because your love wasn’t strong enough, but because
he
wasn’t strong enough.”

He sat up for a minute, then slumped against the pillows. I knew he’d at last seen the truth. I thought that God must be an ironic. Only after he’d taken Dondi’s sight had he allowed him to see. Dondi, Mr. Whyte had said, only saw that which his eyes revealed to him.

Dondi gasped at the enormity of his error. He said, “Promise me that no matter what happens you’ll keep on writing. It’s what you were born to do. Write and love…us.”

“I promise.”

“My will…” he said weakly.

“Dondi, don’t. Please.”

“Listen. I’ve made sure you’re taken care of…I want Leonardo to have the house.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s Colin?”

“He had a meeting in Manhattan.”

Colin had had a meeting that couldn’t be postponed. Matthew and I had insisted he go, assuring him that Dondi would be fine for a few hours. He’d finally given in but had arranged for the helicopter to pick him up and bring him back. Dondi was so close to death now that none of us dared leave his side for long. “I’ll be back by lunch,” Colin had shouted as he ran across the lawn to the waiting helicopter.

“He’ll be back by lunch,” I told Dondi.

“I won’t be here,” Dondi said matter-of-factly.

He fell asleep as I watched his beloved face. The crepuscular Dondi was radiant. Dondi was dying; he looked like he was in love. I wondered what we would do when he passed. We had always been—almost from the beginning—three.

The door to his room opened. Matthew tiptoed inside.

“Matthew? Is that you?” Dondi asked, turning at the sound.

“Yeah, I’m right here. Colin just called to say that he’s on his way back.”

Lifting his head in the direction of Matthew’s voice, he said again, “I won’t be here.” He reached out his hand. Matthew grabbed it and held it tight over his heart. “You take care of each other. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Hold on tight to each other. It’s taken me my whole life to understand that the only thing between birth and death is love, that love is life.” He struggled for breath. “Look out for Colin.” A coughing spasm overtook him, snatching his breath and with it his words.

I reached for his cup and brought it to his lips. When he was finished, he waved it away with his free hand.

“Ah, you’ve come at last,” Dondi said suddenly in a clear, loud voice, startling his brother and me. “You’re very handsome.”

We both turned toward the foot of the bed, where Dondi seemed to be staring; his cloudy eyes seemed sighted.

“Don’t look,” Matthew ordered suddenly and I realized he was speaking to me. “Don’t look,” he repeated, for Death had entered the room, his arms open wide.

I looked away, stared at his cup in my hand. It was a child’s drinking cup with a removable plastic spout. It was blue ceramic with a painted carousel going around it. On the handle perched a little ceramic bluebird that you could make whistle by blowing air through its tail. Inside, on the bottom, it read, “all gone.”

I was still staring at the cup when Matthew gently squeezed my shoulder. “He’s gone, Thomas.”

I shut my eyes tightly. “I know.”

The phone rang. When Matthew answered I could hear Colin’s voice. “How is he? I’m almost there.”

“Colin…he’s…gone.”

Colin’s voice crackled through again. “What? No! My brother is not dead. Do you hear me? He is not dead. Don’t you touch him! I’m coming—” The connection ended abruptly.

I opened my eyes and looked at Dondi. Something about him lying there surprised me. And then I realized what it was about his corpse that shocked me. Dondi was still. Dondi, in life, had never been still. Even in his sleep he would shout and toss and kick off the covers. He had seemed to vibrate with a kind of spiritual wanderlust so that even at rest, he had given the impression of great activity. Dondi, alive, was the most vibrant person I had ever met. Dondi, dead, was deader than a doornail.

***

I heard the helicopter’s approach and left Matthew to say good-bye to Dondi. As I stepped out the front door the chopper landed. Colin’s feet hit the ground almost before the chopper touched down. Keeping his head low, he sprinted across the lawn. As he swept by I reached out an arm. He flashed past, eluding my grip. He shot across the foyer, his long arm reaching for the stair rail. He hauled himself up, two, three steps at a time; the metal sang a dirge under the weight of his grief.

When I got upstairs he had Dondi in his arms, was shaking him. “Wake up, Dondi. Goddamn you! Don’t do this. Wake! Up!”

“Colin.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t leave me…again.”

“Colin—”

“He can’t be dead.” He touched Dondi’s head gently and I knew why he’d said this; Dondi, new with death, was still warm, still pliant.

Portia pushed into the room. “Go,” she said under her breath. “I’ll take care of Colin.”

Matthew nodded and we filed out of the room to attend to the details of death.

The morning of the funeral was sunless. The gunmetal sky carried with it the threat of rain. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. As I stared at my face I remembered that first summer with Matthew when we’d lived without mirrors. Now my face was a stranger’s face. Grief had been etched into flesh like granite. The eyes dark, without laughter, shuttered closed for the season. Below my saddened face, fingers, clumsy with sorrow, attempted to knot my tie—Dondi’s tie. A subtle burgundy and gray stripe by Sulka, it was the one he’d worn to our wedding. Dondi, now forever out of reach. I heard the water running in Matthew’s bathroom, the sound of him brushing his teeth. A single sustained scream erupted out of the silence. I thought it was Colin, overcome. Again. It wasn’t until I felt Matthew’s arms around me, my face buried in the starched white expanse of his shirt that I realized the scream had been my own.

***

I stood staring at Dondi in his burnished bronze casket. His hair shone. “I don’t want to lose my hair,” he’d said. He hadn’t. That incredible mane of hair framed his shrunken face, gleaming like copper. In the end he’d lost everything, but he’d kept his hair.

Wood scraped against wood as the organist sat down. The opening chords of the requiem filled the church. The first notes squealed through the organ’s pipes then hung for a moment in the air before soaring away. The undertaker came and closed the casket; Dondi was now, forever, beyond my sight.

The music took sudden flight, then swooped low before soaring away again. It took off again, this time carrying me with it. With a shrill, extended shriek it released me and sailed up and up. It left me on a cliff of receding sound. Silence rushed in to fill the void.

Portia got up heavily from the pew behind me and made her way to the front of the church. Despite her size she moved with the elegant grace of a fairy tale princess. Her long black dress swirled about her legs. Its handkerchief hem kissed the floor with every step. She stood beside Dondi’s casket and folded her hands. She lifted her head as the piano released its first notes. Tears ran down her face. She started to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Portia ended with a sustained note that soared to the rafters. As the final chord fell away I got up and walked to the podium. I still had no idea what I intended to say. I’d been up half the night trying to write his eulogy. Memory had crowded out words; grief left no room for expression.

“All week,” I began, “since Dondi died, everyone has been trying to console me, telling me he’s in a better place, that he’s with God. Well, I don’t know where Dondi is. All I know is that my baby is gone from here. Gone from my sight. Forever out of my reach.

“I think I wasn’t ready to let him go. One of the last things he said to me was, ‘thank you.’ I still wonder for what. He believed I did a lot for him and maybe I did. We all did what we could. I wanted to do more. I wanted to give him back his health. I wanted to give him more
time
. None of these things were mine to give. I miss him so much. And it’s only been a week. I keep wondering what I can do to honor his memory. I think that if I can live my life with the courage and dignity with which he died, I will have done something. That will be my last gift to Dondi.”

I stopped speaking, tried to catch my breath. My hands were shaking and I could hear my voice getting ready to crack. I closed my eyes, fighting back tears. I felt that if I started crying, I would never stop. I opened my eyes and looked at the faces in that church. Every one of them seemed stunned, exhausted. Grief-stricken eyes seemed to ask: How many more times? How many more will we have to bury before this is over?

Matthew sat between my parents in the first row of pews. My mother held his hand. Despite the tears in his eyes, he nodded encouragement at me. My mother’s lips were moving silently, in prayer for me, I knew, praying that I would move past the loss of Dondi, that I would be okay. Beside my father, Colin, inconsolable, my father’s arm around his shoulders. My father leaned over, whispered something to Colin. My father looking up, caught my eye. I could feel his strength. I drew a breath, started to speak again.

“Everyone always said Dondi was like the sun, dazzling, brilliant, but it seems to me he was more like a comet. He arrived unexpectedly straight out of heaven and lit up the skies of our lives. And we knew, on meeting him, that we would never see his like again. And like a comet he was gone all too soon. With his passing the world seems colder, darker. But if we look inside ourselves we will see that he left a little light with each of us.”

I lit a single white candle. Matthew came up and lit another candle from mine. He went back into the pews and lit Colin’s candle. Colin lit the candle of the person beside him. Eventually every person in that church held a burning candle lit from that one.

From where she sat in the pew beside Colin, Portia led the choir. In clear, strong voices they began to sing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

Soon other voices joined in, adding strength.

Matthew, Colin, Portia, Marquis and I, each of us held a candle in one hand and the brass handle of Dondi’s casket in the other. We had carried Dondi through illness and now we would carry him past death to his final resting place. As we proceeded up the aisle, Leonardo stretched out his hand, his face tear-stained. I beckoned him and he stood and grasped the last remaining handle. We moved up the aisle, the burden of Dondi shared, through an arc of candlelight and love, to the wet street beyond.

***

Under an aluminum sky Dondi’s open grave yawned like a wound. We placed the coffin as a lone musician a few feet away began to play “Amazing Grace” on a bagpipe. Matthew opened his hand; brown earth rained down on Dondi’s coffin. We each did the same. I said good-bye. And then Matthew had my arm, was guiding me through a sea of mourners: black suits, white faces gray with grief. We crossed that endless prairie of bereavement to the waiting limousine. As I bent to enter the car I spotted the two-toned Silver Wraith in the queue of automobiles. Phipps towered beside it, his hatless head bent. Instinctively, I looked around.

It was then that I saw her: Mrs. Whyte. A black veil descended from a stylish three-cornered hat but did not completely obscure her face, pale ivory and seamed without the artifice of makeup. Only her eyes were hidden by expensive black wraparound glasses. She wore no coat, nor did she carry an umbrella, and her black silk sheath was rain-splattered. She seemed unaware of anything but her own grief. I ducked into the car and she was lost from my view.