The Moth (33 page)

And I said, “Yes.”

And he said, “Okay. I can do that.”

And I was like, “Really? Okay.” And so we said good-bye and he left. And the minute he left, I said a prayer. I said, “God, I know I pray a lot, but can this one count for a whole lot more than the other ones? And you don’t even have to listen to anything else I ever say, but if Nick prays, will you answer him?”

And then I called my mom and dad, and I was like, “Can you pray?” And they said they would. And then my parents called my grandparents. And literally there was a Mormon family tree across the United States, praying for me that if he prayed, he would get an answer.

I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. When I did, we agreed to meet up. And we met up and sat on a bench, and we were just small talking. And finally I just broke through and asked the question that I really wanted to ask.

I said, “Did you pray?”

And he said, “Yes.”

I thought,
Wow
, because he’s twenty-nine, and his whole life he’s never once tried to pray.

I said, “What happened?” And he told me that he sat in his
room in silence, and that he prayed, and he asked if God existed. And he sat there for a long time, and he listened. And he realized that even if he did hear an answer, it would just be him telling himself that he had heard an answer because he wanted to be with me, and that it wouldn’t be real.

And that was it. We broke up. And upset as I was that he didn’t get the answer I wanted him to get, I totally understood where he was coming from, because he tried as hard as he possibly could to find God for me, and I tried as hard as I possibly could to have sex for him. But in the heat of the moment, all I could do was bring up God.

You know, my whole life I’d thought that I didn’t have sex because I was Mormon, but I realized in that moment that I don’t have sex because I don’t want to. And sometimes saying no can actually be saying yes.

Elna Baker
is a writer and comedic storyteller. She’s appeared on
The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life
, BBC Radio 4,
All Things Considered, WTF with Marc Maron, Studio 360, The Sound of Young America
,
The Joy Behar Show
, and at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. She’s written for
ELLE, Glamour, Men’s Journal, O, The Oprah Magazine, More, Five Dials
literary journal, and xoJane.com. Her memoir,
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance
, was published by Penguin, earning four stars in
People
and the 2010 AML award for best humor writing. She’s also the co-host and co-creator of
The Talent Show
, recently named best variety show by
New York Magazine
. Her upcoming novel,
You Are My Revenge
, co-written with Kevin Townley, will be published by Scholastic in 2014.

JAMES BRALY

I
am sitting on a little wooden visitor stool in room 202 of the Houston Hospice holding my sister Kathy’s hand, telling her how much I love her. She is on her back in bed in a nightgown and, compared to the hospital we were just at, not much more. Just an oxygen mask and an IV connected to a drug pump that every ten minutes injects her with Dilaudid, a painkiller so powerful and potentially deadly the hospital wouldn’t give it to her.

Evidently Dilaudid’s what you get when there’s no reason to be afraid of dying anymore—when dying is what you’re supposed to do.

And so unlike the hospital, which was full of beeps and monitors and people trying to keep Kathy alive, the hospice is very still and quiet. The only sounds are the hiss from the oxygen and every ten minutes the
zzzt
from the drug pump followed by “Ahh” if Kathy happens to be awake, as she is now, looking
out there
through faraway, Dilaudid eyes. When she turns to me and lifts up her oxygen mask and says, “Do you love me enough to trade places?”

Now, I love Kathy more than anyone I’ve ever known, apart from my little boys, Julian and Ben, and my wife, Jane—on good days.

So I start crying as I look at Kathy thinking,
Are you nuts? Yeah I’m your brother but come on.

But I’m ashamed to say that to Kathy, so I say, “Well, would you want to be married to Jane?” (a teetotaling Dr. Jekyll to Kathy’s party-animal Mr. Hyde), “and would you want to raise Julian and Ben with her?” (Jane continues to breast-feed the boys over my objections, at six and four years, turning me into Mr. Hyde every time I see it.)

Kathy says, “When you put it like that, I don’t think so.”

And she starts laughing until she falls asleep, having chosen death over life in my marriage, which I totally understand because I feel that way too a lot of times. But the main thing is, everything’s under control.

When we first checked Kathy into the hospice, I had a private meeting with the counselor.

I told her, “I’m gonna need your help. My family does not know how to function as a family. We haven’t been in the same room in forty years, since my parents were divorced when I was a little boy. Nobody gets along. Everybody suspects each other of some kind of conspiracy—usually of stealing their money—which is frequently true. They hate Kathy’s boyfriend, Roger. Roger hates them. I want Kathy’s last days filled with peace and love.”

And the counselor said, “That’s a very nice thought. That’s a very noble thought. But in my experience, people usually die the way they lived. So maybe it’s not your job to make things right.”

Which I thought was a very good piece of advice, except that my job—leading my life, living in my marriage—is
infinitely more complicated and painful than trying to lead my family, all of whom have descended on Houston Hospice to be with Kathy.

My dad, a decorated bomber pilot who has transferred his ferociousness from North Korean bombing runs to the ice cream aisle in his local supermarket and is now so massive his knees can’t support his body. My bird-like mom (his first ex-wife) in the brand-new face she gave herself for her seventy-fifth birthday. Her gigantic muumuu-wearing but otherwise identical twin sister in her old face—together looking like this before-and-after advertisement for plastic surgery and liposuction. My big sister Corinne, who runs a makeup shop called Façade (without irony). My older brother Earl, who the last time I saw him was subscribing to
Mafia Magazine
(also without irony). And me, the gray-haired baby brother and family emissary to Kathy’s boyfriend, Roger, who the men call “Long Hair,” the women call “the moron,” and everyone calls “the Aborigine,” because he’s a long-haired moron from Australia, who as I’m sitting there on the stool suddenly walks into the room and past me to Kathy’s bed, grabs her by the shoulders, shakes her awake, and says, “Wake up, rabbit girl! I got the license. We’re gonna be married.”

Kathy opens her eyes and says, “When?”

He says, “Tonight, at ten.” They hug, and she falls back asleep, and he turns to me and says, “Just so there won’t be any misunderstanding.” Meaning he’ll be Kathy’s legal next of kin, giving him legal control of the heirloom china and silver in their apartment, which my sister Corinne thinks are hers. And legal control of Kathy’s body, which my mom thinks is hers.

And he says, “If Corinne wants to have me arrested”—which she does—“it’s gonna be about a lot more than silver. If
she doesn’t leave me alone, I will kill her. I will step on her head, mate,”—he’s Australian—“I am over it.” And he walks back out of the room, leaving me feeling once again that things are out of control.

So when Kathy wakes up, I say, “Are you sure you want to marry this guy? I’m not here to judge, I just want you to make sure you know what’s going on.”

Kathy says, “They may have me on a lot of drugs, but I know what I’m doing. I’m not done partying yet.”

I say, “OK, who’s invited?” Roger has the medical power of attorney, so he’s used that to quarantine everybody else in my family down the hall in a family room.

Kathy says, “I want everybody there. Tell Daddy I want him to give me away,” which he has never done, at either of her previous weddings.

He’s never even
been
to any family wedding, because as he told me when I invited him to my wedding with Jane, “If your mother’s gonna be there, I think I’ll pass.”

I say, “OK.”

She says, “I can’t look at you, Hunt.” My middle name, Kathy’s nickname for me. “It makes me laugh. There are grapes around your head.”

And she falls back asleep.

So I get up and go down to the family room and tell my mom, dad, brother, sister, and aunt. “They’re getting married.”

My dad says, “Can’t be, she’s unconscious, son.”

“Evidently not, Dad. Tonight at ten o’clock. She wants you to give her away.”

“How did Long Hair get a marriage license? The preacher!” The fundamentalist minister who’s been coming around every
night trying to get Kathy’s deathbed conversion. “That son of a bitch.”

My brother Earl says, “Maybe he’s trying to adopt a baby, Dad.” So that he could legally inherit Kathy’s share of the family trust, which cannot go to a boyfriend. Or a childless husband.

My dad says, “I didn’t think of that, son!” proud that his offspring has discovered a conspiracy that he himself has overlooked.

My aunt says, “What adoption agency would let a baby go to a drug addict dying of cancer and a moron? I think it’s going to be hilarious when the Creature finds out he’s not inheriting a thing.”

My mom, her twin sister, says, “He’s too stupid to figure that out.”

My sister says, “I don’t care if you’re a hideous moron, you can’t help it if you’re born stupid and ugly. What matters is what’s inside”—she’s the president of Façade—“and what’s inside, I assure you, is pure evil.”

I say finally, “Whatever we may think of Roger, and I’m not crazy about the guy, I think he’s marrying Kathy because he loves her, and he wants control. Her ashes mean more to him than they do to us.”

My dad says, “He doesn’t love her any more than my cat, son. It’s all about the money. You put your antennae out just a little bit further, and see what you pick up. Now, how are you and Jane getting along?”

“Fine, Dad, we’re getting along fine.”

I get up and go outside to the garden. The hospice is in a converted Tudor mansion that used to belong to an oil baron,
and I sit on a stone bench next to a meditation fountain by an apple tree and call home.

Jane answers and says, “How are you feeling?”

I say, “Fine, I’m doing fine,” because I can’t tell Jane how I’m feeling, because that will bring me closer to the marriage, us closer to each other, and I don’t want to be closer to the marriage. I want to think about Kathy’s marriage, somebody else’s intractable personal problem–filled life, which is about to end. And so when I finish telling Jane about the chaos, I am completely numb, like
I’m
on drugs.

That night, after changing into the dark suit I had reluctantly packed in New York thinking I might have to wear it once, I walk into Kathy’s room for the wedding. Kathy is in the corner, asleep as usual. So we sit around and wait for Roger and the preacher to arrive. And for Roger’s mom, Betty, and her lover BJ—Betty Jane—who have flown here for the wedding and, in my mom’s book worse than being lesbians, are late.

“Where are Betty and her rodent?” she says.

My sister Corinne says, “Maybe the black flapping vultures flew home?”

My dad wheels over and says, “Let me tell you something about Long Hair. His mother—she is a
he
wearing a wig.”

I say, “I don’t know, Dad. She is a little mannish, but—”

“She is not a woman, son. Maybe she’s a
hermaphrodite
. At the least she’s a major oddball.”

I get up and try to get away from him, but he rumbles over and continues. “Your day and your garage have something important in common. They both need to be filled”—my dad frequently speaks in aphorisms, some of which have no apparent connection to observable phenomena—“and it doesn’t matter how big you build your garage. You can build a ten-car
garage, and one day you’ll come home with your eleventh car with no place to put it. It’s just how it is.”

I walk away from him. I’m trying to feel just what I feel for Kathy.

Roger and the preacher walk into the room followed by Betty and BJ. The preacher wakes Kathy up. Corinne does Kathy’s makeup, as only the president of Façade can. Kathy looks beautiful, in a burgundy shawl embroidered around the edges, framing her face to look like a Madonna. Corinne gives her a wedding bouquet.

My dad stands up. The nurse walks in to make sure Kathy’s not being coerced. Roger walks over to the corner and takes Kathy’s hand, and the preacher opens the Bible and begins [
speaking very quickly
], “Dearlybeloved, wearegatheredheretojointhismanandthiswomaninholymatrimony”—like an auctioneer. Because he needs to finish before Kathy falls back asleep.

Kathy says, “I do.” My dad looks at Roger, and they shake hands.

My mom says, “Congratulations,” and gives Roger one of her bony osteoporosis hugs. I pop open the champagne and pour it in the paper cups from the water cooler.

And everybody is drinking a toast to the bride and groom when someone says, “How about a picture of the kids?”

So I walk over to the corner and stand on one side of Kathy’s bed, and my brother and sister stand on the other, and we pose for a photograph. We’re looking out at a giant poster of the same pose, taken twenty years ago at my sister Corinne’s wedding, the only photograph of the four of us together ever taken. Corinne had it enlarged and put on Kathy’s wall to remind her of home. So I stand there staring at how we used to look: Kathy in a red dress, full of life; me, just home from college, thrilled,
really thrilled to tell my family about my new girlfriend, Jane—posing for the last photograph we’ll ever take. My mom and dad looking on, all of us together in a room for the first time I can ever remember, and probably the last, because of Kathy who, in the end, is showing us all how hard it is, but how beautiful it can be, to let go.

James Braly
is the author of
Life in a Marital Institution: 20 Years of Monogamy in One Terrifying Memoir
, published in 2013 by St. Martin’s Press. The first two-time winner of The Moth Grand-SLAM, a contributor to
This American Life
, and the writer and performer of
The New York Times’
Critics Pick Off Broadway monologue
Life in a Marital Institution: 20 Years of Monogamy in One Terrifying Hour
(much of which was developed at The Moth with years of support from Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, Lea Thau, and the amazing Moth community), James has performed at the Whitney Museum, Symphony Space, and on a fourteen-city national tour presented by Meredith Vieira Productions. His autobiographical stories have been broadcast nationally on NPR,
Marketplace
, and
Selected Shorts
, and his personal essays have been published in
The New York
Times and
Redbook
. James teaches storytelling at Fordham University and is developing a television series based on
Life in a Marital Institution
with Meredith Vieira Productions.