The Brothers K (97 page)

Nothing ends without breaking, because everything is endless
.

—Antonio Porchia

I
n the dream world I entered as we drove home from Mira Loma, we all had canoes and were paddling across a lake. Or not canoes exactly. These were smaller, more fragile vessels—like skin kayaks or umiaks, but open-topped. They sat so low in the water that we had to paddle very calmly to keep from swamping. And the lake was vast: no land in sight. We had to paddle so calmly that it did not seem wise to talk. But we were gliding along in a shifting V, like geese, fifteen silhouettes, each to his own vessel. Even Nash, minuscule and stalwart, paddled his own tiny craft.

The night sky was indigo. Stars hung down around us all the way to the horizon. The lake surface was so still that it reflected every star till our bows and wakes would seem to knock them from the sky. We carried nothing but our paddles, not even food. Like salmon on their upriver journey, we didn’t seem to need it. When we were thirsty we’d dip a
careful handful of water from the lake. It tasted wonderful, so icy cold. And arcing off our sterns were the frail ropes we’d made—of our own saliva, it seemed in the dream, as if we were spiders, or nest-weaving birds—fifteen shining threads leading back to the prow of the cumbersome raft on which Irwin lay. And fragile though they were, together the threads were holding. Wounded though he was, Irwin’s life was still in him, and in a silent, steadfast V we were towing him home when,

quietly but inarguably,

Papa’s little vessel sprang a leak …

Just a small, steady stream, about the diameter of a pencil.

It sounded almost pleasant, gurgling upward like a tiny forest spring.

But we all stopped paddling, and no one spoke. There was no need to speak. The thin skin hulls. The icy, shoreless waters. The beautiful stars, clear down to the horizon. We all knew at once that he was going down.

We encircled him in silence. We listened to the gurgling. We wondered how the water felt, so cold around his feet. But we didn’t ask. And he didn’t say. He didn’t speak, didn’t struggle, didn’t try to stop or even slow the flow. He just laid his paddle across his gunnel, rested his hands on it, sat still, waited. So we sat still and waited with him …

The gurgling grew quieter, then stopped altogether as the water rose higher in his boat. Any moment now it would rush in over the sides, there’d be a swirl, perhaps a brief struggle. Then we would never see him again. Yet we sat so still that our wakes disappeared completely: the reflected stars crept clear in to the walls of our boats: up became no different than down, water no different than sky, stars lay deep below us, hung above us, surrounded us. And there was suddenly no question, in that great sphere of stillness, that everything, even Papa’s disappearance, was going to be all right. Someone—I couldn’t see who, but the voice was far from musical—even began to risk her balance and life by chanting a little death song.

I opened my eyes …

I
t was Mama.

She was sitting on the bed in the back of the old Nomad with Irwin’s head in her lap, stroking his hair and softly singing. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tune was that of some old hymn of which he’d been fond. Trying to jog his poor, blasted memory already.

But then I turned toward the fold-down bunk across from me, where
Papa lay sleeping, and saw, in the early-morning light, the blackness that had for days been gathering beneath his eyes. And though it felt like a betrayal of the calm and beauty of the dream, and of all that our courageous little band had just accomplished, grief and fear like water gushed up inside me.

The game is not over until the sixth inning is over
.

—Lee Ming Chen

T
he leak in Papa’s boat was cancer. First in his left lung, and a surgery to remove it was scheduled. But while we awaited the date the doctors ran more tests, and found it in his liver. Then in his lymphatic system. And our lives became my dream: no need to speak. The thin skin hulls. Shoreless waters. We all knew at once that he was going down …

We listened to the doctors’ estimates of how much time he might still have. We learned the names and side effects of the painkillers and useless therapies. We wondered how it felt, running wild through his body. But we didn’t ask. And Papa didn’t say. He didn’t complain, didn’t struggle, didn’t try to stop or even slow the flow. One astonishingly simple phone call to the Tug front office and he was finished with the game that had been his life. He then began to sit with his death, for most of each day
and evening, in his old armchair in the livingroom. Not moving much. Not saying much. Just trying to accept—the hardest work of his life. So, when we could, we would sit there with him, trying to do the same.

“W
rite soon, write much,” Everett told us in his first letter home from Wahkiakum. Little did he know what he was asking.

Papa insisted that he be the first to share the news. He kept his letter brief, and pulled no punches. He said that we had managed to save Irwin, “thanks to you, and the good people who answered your wake-up call.” He said that Irwin had stayed in an Adventist mental hospital for a week, but that he was already back home with us, and physically healthy, though “still in pretty rough shape.” He then wrote:

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just let fly. I have cancer. Three kinds. All serious. Inoperable. The doctors tell me I’m dying, and it feels that way to me too. I hate having to tell you this when you’re already on the ropes, but it’s going to take all our strength and all our love to come to terms with it in the time we have left. So there you have it.

If it’s all right with you, Laura and I would like to be your first two visitors, come July. We’re very proud of you. More later.

Love, Papa

Mama added a note in the same envelope. Hers said:

So much has happened since your beautiful sermon that I’m afraid you may to have to wait for a Better World to receive the thanks you deserve. I want your father to be at peace, but find so little peace in myself right now that I fear I’ll fail him. I’m afraid for your brother Irwin, and for his wife. I’m afraid for your sister Bet. I’m afraid for you.

Peter’s home. He’s staying with Kade and Amy, and working terribly long days here for me. I don’t know what happened to him in India, but something did. He refuses to let me pay him, he’s always smiling, he never reads, he eats like a horse. He’s been a help in a hundred ways. I don’t think we’d have gotten Irwin home without him.

I love my sons. I’m so sorry to send you this news.

Your mother

Peter’s letter to Everett began like this:

I feel as though we’re all headed in slow motion for a car wreck, knowing already that we’re all going to be injured, and that one of us is going to be killed. I see no way out of this. And I’m not looking for easy consolations. But we’re all so distracted by what’s happened these past few days that I’m afraid we’re going to forget to tell you about the past few weeks. I hope Papa finds time and strength to tell you himself, but I want to say right now that for me it feels as though if we
are
at the end of Papa’s life, it’s been a pretty great life, and a pretty great ending. That doesn’t lessen the loss, I know. But maybe it makes the hurt more worthwhile. Let me try to tell you what I mean …

I don’t know where he found time or focus, but Peter went on to write an incredibly detailed letter, telling Everett all about Papa’s last pitch, about his encounter with Elder Babcock, about his futile but courageous one-man assault on Major Keys and the Loffler Center and about the oddities, the wonders, the outright joys of the Mira Loma rescue operation. It was a tremendous letter. Freddy and I were too screwed up with grief and confusion to add much, but we tacked on postscripts, just telling Everett that we loved him and missed him and would come see him soon as we could.

Then came a letter about which the rest of us knew nothing. Taking a page out of my book, Bet opened a PO box over in Washougal and started a secret correspondence with Everett. This is how it began:

Dear Everett,

You said you wanted to hear everything, so I’m going to tell you. Papa is dying, and that’s all anyone can think about. But it’s not all I think about. There’s other things happening here, things as bad, maybe worse. Like with Irwin. He lives in the back bedroom, mine and Freddy’s old room, alone. Linda and Nash stay upstairs now. We all take care of him, Mama the most, and he’s not quite as helpless, physically, as he was at first. Like he goes to the bathroom on his own now, and he’ll eat if you make him, and can usually keep it down. But so what? That’s what no one but me will tell you. Because he never speaks to anyone, or even looks at anyone. His face never changes. He never wants to leave the house, or even his bed. To take him on walks Peter and Kade have to lift him and drag him. And once he’s outside it’s awful. Because he walks like Frankenstein. Even looks like him,
with the scar on his forehead. And when people, even old friends and neighbors, see him on the street, they look away. When strangers see him they honk and yell things. “Hey, Retard!” Or Roy. Remember Papa’s old friend? When he saw Irwin he just held his hand a while, then started crying and walked away. Kincaid thinks we should let Irwin be, let him sit in his room till he’s ready to act different. Mama and Peter think the walks and contact with people might help. Papa doesn’t know. He sits with Irwin for an hour or so each evening, but I think he only does it because he himself is so sick. Or not sick.
Dying
. I keep forgetting. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing does. Because his dying, Papa’s dying, should be the worst thing we have to face. But it’s not. The worst thing is, there’s already been a death. Irwin’s. He’s dead inside, Everett, I swear. They killed him in Mira Loma, then let us save an empty body, and nobody here wants that, everybody fights it, if I told them what I’m telling you they’d think I was some kind of monster. But Linda is so afraid of what he’s become, and fights it so hard, she scares me. She’s out of control, Everett. We all are. But her way scares me. Like with Nash. She thinks Irwin likes Nash, that he’s better around the baby, so she makes Irwin lie on his back on their bedroom floor. If Peter or Kade or somebody aren’t here to help she just shoves Irwin out of bed, knocks him on the floor. And then she puts Nash on him, and leaves. Of course Nash loves it. He crawls around on Irwin like he’s a jungle gym, hits him with toys, gouges at his mouth and eyes, chews on him, makes him bleed. It’s sick. If Irwin could feel, Nash would be making him scream. I think Linda is using the baby to punish him, punish Irwin, for being dead. Sometimes I even think she hopes Irwin will go nuts and kill the baby.

Or listen to this: I can’t sleep at night, you’ve probably heard. I’m sick in the head, you’ve probably heard. And I walk around when it’s bad. No, that’s a lie. I
sneak
around, Everett, and listen at doors. I’ve been doing it for years. I can’t stand myself for doing it, I hate myself, but I said I’d tell you everything. The way people acted, nothing ever made sense, Mama especially, and I wanted to understand. So I started sneaking. And our little family! These people we think we know! Like Linda, when Nash is sleeping, I shouldn’t say this, I hate myself for knowing it, but she goes in with Irwin. She takes off her clothes. Then she takes off Irwin’s clothes. And she does things. Whispers to him, like lovers do, or just cries and cries, while she rubs him, everywhere. Rubs him and slaps him. “Wake up, wake up, come out of this! You can hear me, liar! You hear, you fucker! Look at me. You feel this.
Look at your penis. You couldn’t do this if you were so dead! Wake up, you lying bastard!” And he doesn’t know her from Nash, Everett. He doesn’t know any of us. But she keeps doing things, everywhere, rides him, bites him, makes horrible sounds. Hits him. Hits him
hard
, then pleads with him. Does sick things to him, then cries on him. And he never speaks, never moves unless she moves him, stares at nothing, doesn’t make a sound. She treats him like her toy. Like some life-sized sicko doll you order in the back of a dirty magazine. She’s crazy, Everett. I really think she’s ill. And it’s my fault for listening, I’m sick too, sicker than her. But I’m starting to hate her for it. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t even know. But I can’t sleep knowing they’re down there, and she’s doing this. So I listen. But no. I’m lying again. I don’t listen, Everett. I’m a worm. I’m scum. Because I have a way, if I want, if she forgets one simple thing, and she often does, where I can watch. I hate me. I hate her. But I watch. There. I’ve told you. And if you tell anyone, I swear to God, I’ll kill myself.
You
know I mean it. But write to me, Everett. I can’t stand this, I can’t stand it. Papa’s dying. Irwin’s alive but dead. Linda’s sick. I’m sicker. Tell me something. Help me. Bet

F
or the last four months of his life the major projects of Papa’s days were to dress himself, to totter out to his armchair, to read the sports page and mail, to make no mistakes in calculating his occasional need for and distance from the bathroom, and—with his secretary Freddy’s help—to answer all the mail before it was time to totter back to bed. A simple enough regimen; arduous, because of the disease; yet manageable day after day in a way that led us to hope modest hopes. There was no mention among us of miracle words like “cure” or even “remission.” The one of us who might have openly prayed for such things was inert now, and mute. But Papa’s condition did enable us to find some solace in previously meager-sounding terms such as “no change” or “stable.”

To my surprise, the worst threat to this stability did not seem to be the cancer. We all knew that our father was a much-loved man, and expected that he would receive visitors. What I didn’t expect was how much I’d come to dread these near-daily invasions by friends, relatives and ballplayers, ballplayers, ballplayers, most of whom could find no way to express their love for Papa but to display their grief in advance—and so
demand, however inadvertently, that he console them by displaying in return his great but dying strength. These were often people I loved, and always people I would normally have been glad to meet. It was their right to come, and Papa’s right to show them whatever face he chose. But since his choice was strength, strength, strength, even when I knew he had none, and since it was we, not the visitors, who watched him pay the price for his strength later, it became all I could do not to resent, or even despise, these good people. Which made me ashamed. So I took to avoiding them.