Every Happy Family (13 page)

Three Years Later – Spring 2011

CHASING THE CIRCLE CLOSED

Les rearranges his pillows so he's semi-upright, the only position he can sleep in and still breathe comfortably what with the fluid making a swamp of his lungs. R2D2, his nickname for the oxygen machine he's tethered to, drones in the corner of the room, the fat silver canister a constant reminder of his dependence, and noticing it seems to make him feel weaker still. He removes the tubes from his nose to scratch an angry itch then reaches for the cream beside his bed. The oxygen dries the hell out of his nasal passages and he doesn't want another nosebleed.

The mattress tilts as Jill steps up onto it and wedges the Windex between her knees.

“Why didn't you get Sylvia in?” he asks and instantly regrets it.

“I can do a better job,” she says, though he knows the real answer is monetary.

“As if the kids are going to notice the dead moths in our bedroom fixture.”

“I wonder how old the kids have to be before we stop thinking of them as baby goats,” she says, the first of the screws scraping against metal on the overhead light.

His laugh comes out as a congested snort, a piglet's snuffle.

“It's true, though,” she says, “I still view them as the kids. There must come a time.”

“When they hit forty-five.” That was the age when he came to the abrupt realization that his youth was forever behind him. It was as if he'd reached the top of a beautiful mountain only to see where he was headed: downhill, on the rocky side that didn't get much sun.

Jill pockets the screws, dumps flaky grey carcasses onto her rag and sprays the inside of the glass.

“I'll remind Annie to pick up Pema at the airport,” he says, glad to have thought of it.

“Katie's getting her, remember?”

How did he forget?

“I wonder why Beau insists on taking the bus from the ferry,” says Jill. “I should just go get him.”

“He may be a baby goat but he's not helpless.” Finished with the cream, he refits the tubes into his nose. “What's Quinn's girlfriend's name again?”

She doesn't answer.

“Jill?”

“What?”

“Quinn's girl's name?”

“Woman friend. Holly.”

“Girlfriend,” he says and clears his throat. “Where'd they meet?”

“Didn't ask. Just hope it wasn't rehab.”

“Not good enough for our addict?”

“He needs strong people around him.”

“You're judging her before you've even laid eyes on her?” Trying to talk over R2D2 makes his lungs wheeze like a feeble accordion. “You can control the moth count in your fixtures” – he breathes deeply through his nose – “but you have to let the kids bed their own choices.”

“Just wasn't expecting him to bring her.”

“My fault.” He reaches for his water. Quinn had asked if it was all right and he'd said please do. He doesn't want to put things off any longer. He picks up Le Carré from the pile of espionage books Annie brings every week from the downtown library. Fast-paced thrillers are the only thing that knocks down these four walls for a while and distracts him from the headache in his bones, as he's come to think of this dull, insistent pain that keeps reminding him he has a body, a failing one. He sips his water through a plastic straw with faint red candy stripes and bendable neck, the very kind, he's almost sure, that he used to drink chocolate milk when he was a child.

“I was thinking maybe, for Quinn's sake, we shouldn't have wine or beer around,” says Jill.

“I don't want a heavy-handed occasion. And maybe pandering to his weakness isn't helpful.”

Jill fits the fixture back in place and Les opens to his bookmarked page and the Hallmark card he received from Faye. Annie had insisted on calling Faye to let her know his condition. “She's your mother,” Annie said in that tone one doesn't bother arguing with. “She'll want to know.” He rereads the words:

Healing takes time, so please,

take it easy.

Wishes for a speedy recovery.

Faye and Nickel

He holds the card to his nose then remembers he can't smell with these tubes in, tucks it back inside the book which he lays face down on his stomach. “We're doing this thing in the family room?”

“We'll do the ceremony, yes, in the family room.”

“Ceremony? Less scary than Living Wake, but do we have to call it something?”

“Celebration. Life Celebration is what I've been calling it.”

“Just keep it informal, please, or I'll wish I was dead already.” He picks up his book and Jill frowns at him from her lofty angle.

“Come on, you said you liked the idea. I've worked hard on this.”

Les looks at her. Amazing, really, that they have grown so used to his dying that they can bicker. That his tender, sympathetic, frightened-to-death Jill has grown used to it. Can you get used to anything? Even being dead?

“And we've talked about the importance of ritual,” Jill adds. “For the kids.”

“Stage fright,” is all he tells her, out of breath, and waves an apologetic hand. What bothers him most about this Life Celebration is going public with the understanding that this is it. This thing tomorrow will put the formal stamp on it. No more treatment options. No
speedy recovery
. There's something to be said for self-deception and having the people around you playing along. Not so unlike a good escapist novel.

He eyes the bottle of Percoset beside his water, wonders if he should damn the constipation and take a half of one tonight to ensure a decent night's sleep, maybe feel a little stronger for tomorrow.

A screw slips from Jill's hand and lands in the valley between his feet. She picks it up and gives his foot a squeeze through the covers. “It's your party, Sweetheart. You can just sit back and take it all in.”

Like a decadent, feeble king, he thinks.

“We'll do the Life Celebration in the family room with drinks and appetizers, and eat dinner, more formally, sorry, in the dining room. Then we'll retire to the family room again for dessert and coffee.”

“All planned out.”

“You know me.” The fixture now screwed back in place, she climbs down off the bed. “It'll be strange seeing Kenneth after all these years.”

“Looking forward to it.” And he was. The Kenneth he remembers, with his macho disregard for convention, was bullishly entertaining. It had always been hard to see him as Jill's brother.

“I'm trying to,” says Jill. “He could have made more effort to see Mom. We've never even met his wife.”

“We could have gone to them.” And Japan would have been a treat.

“We had kids to raise.”

When we went to Nepal, he doesn't say, only watches her go into the walk-in closet, take off her shirt. Then, like some modest ingenue, she turns her back to him before unhooking her bra, sliding the straps down her shoulders. It's been her habit for the last ten years and he's never figured out if she turns her back because she's embarrassed her breasts aren't what they used to be or if she's afraid he'll get turned on when she isn't up for it. Whatever it is, it saddens him. He loves her breasts and misses seeing them. Funny, or not funny, how after twenty-seven years of marriage, he's shy to ask her to turn around.

“I imagine living in Japan would make a person hypertidy,” he says.

“That should be a word, hypertidy.” She takes off her jeans, folds them onto the closet shelf. “Such crisp happy beats. Onomatopoetic really.”

He thinks of Ned Flanders for some reason, and the word hypertiddly. As she reaches for her nightshirt, he catches the lovely outside curve of her breast.

“I asked my etymology class,” she says without looking at him, “to come up with new viable words and their meanings and one kid came up with overstand. Instead of understand? Means one truly understands, beyond what is required or useful. Or it can be used when someone is belabouring the –”

“I overstand already. What's Kenneth's wife's name?” Names are so elusive these days.

“Kimmie. Kimmie. Infantilizing sounds, like a diminutive on a diminutive. A name for a three-year-old.”

“And this infant is how old?”

“Thirty-two to his forty-nine. Typical Kenneth.” She shakes her head.

“You're so tough on him. Hey, they've lasted ten years.”

“I'll give him that. And she's educated, has a masters in history, I think it is.”

“I thought he wanted kids.” He should stop talking, but the thought of seeing his own kids tomorrow has him keyed up.

“Said he wanted a baseball team. Maybe they couldn't have any.” Done buttoning her nightshirt, she finally faces him. “Probably best not to have kids in Japan right now. They say the next generation is where the fallout, so to speak, will start showing up. So awful. I'm just glad they live where they do.”

Les has avoided the Fukushima stories in the news. It's too much. Though he did make Jill go out and buy kelp tablets to send to each of the kids. “I'm happy he's bringing Nancy,” he says, changing the topic.

“I'm happy you're happy,” she says on the downslope of a sigh, disappears into the bathroom and returns sawing a piece of floss between her teeth. “Kenneth insists Mom wants to come. As if she knows what she wants. I'm concerned she'll get upset without her routines.”

“Routines? Breakfast, TV, lunch, TV, dinner, TV.” Les has visited the facility where Nancy lives and seen how utterly useless those people are made to feel, and most of them in decent physical health.

“That's not fair.”

“Give her potatoes to peel while she's here, some mending. She'd probably weed the garden if we pointed her in the right direction.”

“I've told Kenneth that Mom's
his
job,” says Jill. “I'll be overwhelmed as it is.”

He clears his throat. “Cause you like being overwhelmed.”

Jill smiles blandly. It's hard to get a rise out of her any more.

“I'm putting Mom in with Pema,” she says. “Tempted to tie a string around their wrists.”

“In case she wanders?”

“Or turns on the gas stove.”

“Has fun with knives and furniture.”

“Oh God,” laughs Jill.

“Put her in with me,” he says with a cough. “I'm up all hours. We can share afterlife notions.”

“Don't be too morbid, please. It makes people nervous.” She returns to the bathroom.

He didn't think he was being morbid. He thought he was being funny. Staring up at the ceiling, his eye comes to rest on the spray of faded brown stains, the explosive result of a shaken beer when this was Quinn's room. Back when the house was filled with the complications of living. Last summer they'd moved out of the master bedroom upstairs and onto the main floor because he could no longer handle stairs. Les has never pointed the stains out to Jill because he's afraid she'll scrub them away or paint them over. He picks up his book.

“Is the lamb marinating?” he thinks to ask.

“In your recipe, followed to the letter. Potatoes too.”

“The skewers –”

“Soaking.” She sticks her head around the corner, a toothbrush full of paste. “I'm the worrier around here. Quit trying to take my job.”

“Have enough triplesec to make a scene with the dessert?”

“Stop it,” she says and he hears the faucet turn on.

“I want serious flame action,” he calls, too loudly, setting off a coughing spasm. The word “action” hurt his throat.

As soon as her head hits the pillow, Jill moans, “I wanted to do the bathroom fixture.”

“Tomorrow.” His breathing has strained shallow, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Tomorrow all our children, and Annie, Mom, and my baby brother will be sitting around the dining-room table,” she says in a awed voice. He can hear in it that she wants nothing but to stop his suffering, and is tired not knowing how.

“Don't forget Quinn's witch of a girlfriend,” he whispers. What the hell's her name?

“I always imagined our boys would be closer,” she says.

Les finds Jill's hand and hooks his fingers through hers. Her warm moist hand makes him aware of the dry cold of his.

“I'm going to make flower arrangements with the lilacs and tulips.” She gives his hand a squeeze. “God, I'm nervous about seeing Pema. She sounds so grown up in her letters.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh well, it's good she's had the chance to see how the other half lives.”

Pema. His eyes involuntarily fill and he turns his head towards the aquarium housing the two angelfish Jill brought home one day to “watch over him” while she was at work, before Annie began coming over.