Are You Sitting Down?

  “Mom, are you in the kitchen?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I just came in from feeding the birds.”

  “Come to the window.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just come to the window, the one above the sink.”

  “Okay, I’m at the window.”

  I saw her shadow appear there. It was still too dark outside to see her clearly.

  “Can you see me?” I asked.

  “Martin, you know my eyes are bad. What am I supposed to see?”

  “I’m waving to you.”

  “Hello dear. What am I doing?”

  “I think you are giving me the finger,” I laughed.

  “Martin White! I am not!”

  “I’m just kidding,” I laughed.

  “You silly boy.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mom.”

  “Merry Christmas, son.”

  Justin

  A monitor beeps in my left ear. A ventilator rises and falls over my right shoulder. Long thin plastic tubes lay against my skin, but they’ve been resting there for so long my skin is numb to their touch. Although my eyes are closed, I imagine that I must resemble Frankenstein’s monster or some kid’s eight grade science project. A band of black stitches encircles half my bald scalp on the right side, starting behind my ear and ending at my temple.

  I am naked beneath the cotton sheets, having made the nurse and Travis pull off my gown last night before I slept. I doze in a slightly reclined position because I have been watching the television mounted high above me on the wall. The television has now been turned off because Travis thinks I want to sleep. The room is quiet, except for the machines and the almost meditative rhythm of his breathing beside me.

  I’ve been in and out of hospitals so much recently, but I always look forward to the bed. I wish Travis and I had one like it back in our apartment. Like a kid, I raise it up as far as it will go and then feel like a kid cradled in its mother’s arms as I push the button to lower it completely flat again. Travis laughs at me for playing, but I tell him I’m just testing to make sure the bed works properly. To convince him, I push the button to call the nurse. There’s a knock at the door and a tall thin male nurse let’s himself in. He’s cute, blond, and shiny. His ceil blue scrubs are crisp and clean. Travis and I whisper like school girls behind him when he leaves.

  “Forget the bed. We need one of those buttons at home,” Travis says with a laugh.

  I sometimes see those movable beds advertised on television late at night. Some elderly woman is inclined in bed and channel surfing, or eating, or reading the paper. Stuffing pillows between my back and the headboard of our flat mattress just doesn’t feel the same. Once, I thought about calling the number flashing at the bottom of the screen and having one of those beds installed for us. I’d wait and do it for an anniversary or something just to have an excuse.

  “Your insurance will pay for a hospital bed if you want one,” Travis told me.

  I shake my head no. He thinks I’m just being stubborn. I am. I don’t want to look like an invalid at home for as long as I can prevent it, but I also don’t want to sleep alone. The only thing that makes our bed comfortable now is him sleeping in it next to me.

  It is protocol for the doctors and nurses to put on a pair of rubber gloves when entering the room to examine me. There is always an IV to change or blood to be taken. Some of the regular nurses don’t put on gloves to just take my temperature or blood pressure. They know nothing I have is contagious. The regulars are also accustomed to seeing Travis next to my bedside. They greet him and call him Mr. White, and share my progress with him. They know who he is to me.

  A new nurse covering a shift will see Travis and then nervously check my chart while reaching for the gloves from the box on the wall. Because their first impression is that we are a gay couple, they assume they will find the letters HIV on my chart. A second glance at the clipboard assures them I’m clean. A young female nurse blushed at her assumption. Travis and I eyed her quietly, adding discomfort to her mistake.

  “Diseases hold no prejudice. Only humans,” I groggily whispered to one nurse who’d done the same.

  Travis hushed me.

  The nurse looked at me with a bit of shock over me reading her mind. We didn’t see her again.

  It’s been four days since I was admitted this time. Travis shaved my head for me the night before the surgery. I refused to allow any nurse to do it, even a cute one. I’d shaved Travis’s face for him before out of some loving favor I thought would be romantic. He was hesitant about letting me do it because I never had to shave. The absence of body and facial hair had made me look like some prepubescent grade school kid all my life. It only grows in the private places, not even under my arms. I looked worse after the chemo. Travis joked about buying a toupee for me, but he knew I’d settle for a ball cap. I still felt like a pale psychic alien being from some movie.

  I say psychic because that’s exactly how I feel sometimes. It’s not a strange side-effect listed in all the small print Travis and I had to read, but the possibility should be explored. With the ball cap on, and sunglasses to cover the absence of eye brows, people still look intently at me. I try to ignore their expressions of sorrow, but I know what they are thinking. Back home, their kids will tell the other family members about the strange bald man in the grocery store. The parent will hush them and feel the need to explain how pitiful I looked. Cancer may not have a cure, but it all looks the same.

  That’s why no matter how much Travis begged, I refused to go out. Forget the grocery store. Forget a quick trip to the bank or post office, and restaurants are definitely not an option. I’m content with my time spent behind walls at the hospital or in our apartment, like Quasimodo lurking in the shadows. It seems a waste to number my days, biding my time, between these two places. When we learned the cancer was malignant, the daily chore of being anywhere else except for in the hospital seemed overwhelming. Spending the rest of my time at home was much more comfortable, and between the two places, as long as Travis was with me I never got bored being there.

  The chemo failed. It seems the vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, loss of appetite, and hair loss were not the only side effects of the treatment. The tumor originally in the right hemisphere of my brain barely broke down, but metastatic offshoots from it became secondary neoplasms on the opposite side. I’d just begun to fully recover from the treatments. I almost had a full head of hair back. Then, the headaches came back.

  Gamma knife radiosurgery would have been the next option had the neoplasms chosen a different organ to take refuge. A craniotomy would remove the remainder of the original tumor, which is the reason for being in the hospital now. Then, it’s a waiting game to see if a tumor develops at all on the opposite side. The doctors keep saying there’s a fifty percent chance it will be benign if it does develop, but isn’t there a fifty percent chance at everything? It will either rain or it won’t. One team always wins, one always loses. Unless it’s a tie, but there are no ties in cancer. I will either die of this or I won’t, but somehow I think those percentages are much different.

  My parents came to town to offer their awkward and daunting support. Mom cries and holds my hand too tight. Dad just stands there with his hands in his pockets, eyeing his watch as if he has somewhere more important to be. I pretended to be asleep for most of the time they were here, leaving Travis to deal with them. He’s always had more patience with them than I ever did. He coaxed them into a hotel for the night because he knew I’d rest better without them being here. It’s Travis I prefer to stay with me anyway; and he has been here, never leaving my side through all of this.

  “Are you tired?” I asked him.

  “No, I’m fine, Justin. I napped a little while you were asleep.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean then, Sweetie?”

  “Are you tired of dealing with all of this? With me?”

  He was silent for a bit, thinking about what I h
ad asked him and how he was going to answer. I looked at him for a long time, wondering if he was going to answer at all. Maybe he was pretending I was just a little child asking an embarrassing question when the grown ups in the room all act like nothing happened. Then he spoke.

  “I think both of us are tired of it. If there’s any place I’d rather be right now, I’d want you to be right there with me. I’d want you to be healthy.”

  “With hair?” I asked, trying to laugh but it hurt too much.

  “I don’t know. I kind of like the bandages,” he said studying my head. I knew he was joking.

  * * * *

  Back home, Travis removed the bandages for me every other day to change them and let the stitches get some air. The stitches resembled a large puffy closed eyelid across the side of my head, like some strange giant conjoined twin that my body had absorbed at birth. My hair eventually started to grow back. The black peppery fuzz reminded me of a GI Joe doll I played with as a child, except now he was recovering from a massive head wound inflicted by some back yard war.

  Somehow I found it easier to face the world with a hairless fish bone-like scar on the side of my head than with no hair at all. I was no longer the sad pale cancer patient for strangers to feel sorry for. I kept my hair buzzed short, mainly to prevent infection near the wound while it healed, but the military look gave people a different impression. Suddenly, they were happy for me instead of apologetic.

  “God bless you, son,” an old lady said grabbing my arm, assuming I was a troop. I just smiled and didn’t say anything. It felt better to be appreciated than spurned with the plague.

  I let Travis talk me into going to a restaurant, but I would only go for lunch and take the chance that it would be less crowded than dinner service anywhere in this city. Avoiding public places now just felt like an old habit I needed to break.

  The scar was permanent; the hair would not grow back to cover it entirely, but I found myself forgetting about it. Patches of pigmentless hair or no hair at all are like mysterious pieces missing from a human puzzle. I was really the only one who took notice. Others ignored it because it wasn’t such a rarity these days to see someone with a harsh visible blemish, and their behavior or lack thereof helped me to disregard it too.

  The restaurant was a quiet sky lit place on the roof of some downtown hotel skyscraper. It was enclosed in glass and you could eat inside, where they often opened all the windows, or outside on the terrace if it wasn’t too windy. It was a place Travis and I had eaten at in the past for birthdays or celebrations, or just for an excuse to go downtown. The menu is filled with anomalous dishes like Seafood Ragout and Wild Mushroom Pizza. Travis laughed at me for sticking to the simple dishes I knew like Pimento Cheese on Rye or Chicken Strips with Hot Mustard. He always ordered one of the more irregular items and let me sample some from his plate.

  The sudden epileptic seizure was an awkward tingle I had never felt before. I jolted back in my chair like an astronaut at lift-off. A strong force felt like it was pushing against my face and all I could do was shake to escape its push. It was out of control and violent, forcing me onto the floor. I was not conscious enough to know what Travis did, but I do know his patience greatly outweighs his fear. He probably rolled me over onto my back and turned my head to the side so the vomit could drip from my mouth and I wouldn’t choke. A waitress might have screamed. Some of the other patrons stood up from their tables and watched. Travis begged someone to call for an ambulance as I lay their convulsing.

  “These seizures are transient symptoms due to abnormal, excessive activity in the brain,” the doctor told us.

  The word transient made me think of those particles from the original tumor taking root on the opposite side of my brain. They’d set up camp and another tumor was forming.

  “What are his choices?” Travis asked the doctor.

  “In a few months, we could attempt chemo again,” the doctor answered.

  “He may not have a few months!” Travis yelled. It was the first time I ever heard him raise his voice. I liked it.

  “I’m not doing chemo a second time,” I mumbled. No one was listening to me.

  “The gamma surgery is also a possibility if this new tumor becomes malignant. We still need to give the right side of his brain some recovery time. Right now, it’s still too early to weigh the options.”

  “No more surgeries,” I whispered.

  “What do you want to do?” Travis asked in a much calmer voice, turning to me, unaware of the things I’d already said.

  “I just want to go home.”

  And so we did.

  That was the last time I ever saw a hospital in this world.

  * * * *

  “Can he come here and be with us?” My Mom asked Travis on the phone.

  I knew she would ask. I was mouthing the word no to Travis and cutting the air with my hands like a referee.

  “Sure, I can drive him up. We’ll leave whenever he feels like it.”

  “Why did you lie to her?” I asked Travis when he hung up the phone.

  “If I didn’t tell her that, they might come here and try to make you go back with them,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go there.”

  “You don’t have to go there. You never have to go.”

  Speaking words of hope felt good. Hearing them felt even better. But neither of us could ignore the inevitable. At some point, I was going to go.

  I imagined my mother and father at home in Ruby Dregs preparing a place for me, but it would be a place I wasn’t acquainted with. Mom would pick up the newspapers and magazines that always cluttered the floor. She’d move the dust around with her hands and spit shine the pictures on the wall. She would open the door to my room and let it air out. She might change the sheets on the bed. Dad would just sit and wait, with his hands folded neatly across his belly, in silence.

  Mom would stand at the window periodically throughout the day, pulling back the drapes and peeking through the yellowed blinds, waiting to see Travis’s car pull up in the drive. She’d envision the passenger door opening and me stepping out and running to the door to greet them with a smile on my face. I’d come home.

  From the moment I left it and moved in with Travis, that wasn’t my home anymore. I felt like a foster child every time I had gone home to see them. A summer weekend, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or whenever all seemed like I was on guard and walking across a frozen pond. At any moment, the surface could crack and I would fall in to a chilling drown.

  Several days passed, maybe weeks or months. I stopped counting. Travis had second thoughts, and he said I should go home and see them. The phone had not rang once. They never showed up at our door unexpectedly. Mom had most likely pulled the curtains to and closed the door to my room again. Dad had gone back to doing whatever it was that he did each day. They were just waiting for their phone to ring to bring the news they knew would inevitably come.

  It was my time to go, to leave Ruby Dregs and never have to think about going back; to leave my parents although it felt like I’d left them long ago. And sadly, to leave Travis though I could never imagine life without him. I didn’t have to imagine that. My life was almost over.

  “It’s not about them anymore,” I told Travis when he carefully chose his words to try to get me to go.

  “It never was about them. I know that. Don’t you want to see them?”

  “No. It’s too late, Travis. I’ve got to go now,” I said crawling under the bed sheets.

  “Justin, not now!”

  “Please…just hold me close and be strong for me now,” I told him.

  “I can’t be strong when you are my only weakness,” he said as tears fell from his cheeks.

  “You’ve done so much for me Travis, more than anyone else ever has. Let me go.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, squeezing my hand and crawling into bed beside me.

  “Let me go,” I repeated.

  I closed my eyes, resting my face against his side.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

  For just a moment, I was allowed to step back and look at us from across the room or maybe above it. My scar was hidden against Travis’s shirt. To anyone else we would have looked like a normal couple resting on the bed. All the pain was hidden or gone. I held my transparent hands in front of my face with ease, as if holding a camera, and I pretended to snap a photo to remember this. I didn’t need a photo to remember, because I knew I would never forget him.

  I left the room alone or maybe with someone from my past I didn’t remember or had never met before. I tried to turn back and take another look at us, but had somehow quickly forgotten I was ever there.

  I felt light on my feet. Every burden, and even the cancer, had been lifted. It had all washed away. Passing through the door, I went away too.

  Mrs. Black

  I woke up to find all the lights on the tree had gone out. I leaned behind it to see if it had come unplugged. It had not. The last of the working lights had just burned out during the night. A few days ago the tree looked like some odd planetarium map of the constellations with some parts still twinkling and others in the dark. I had left the tree up all year, since last Christmas, and left it plugged in. About mid-January this year, I intended to take it down. Then, February came and it was still there. I cut pink and red hearts out of crepe paper and tucked them onto the limbs for amusement, shamrocks for March, and Easter eggs for April. Thanksgiving was here before we knew it, when others had just begun to look forward to putting a tree up again. Ours was already up, adorned in the traditional symbols from every holiday that had passed since last Christmas.