Chapter 3 #12
“Any questions?” he asks, not really expecting any, when he sees one of the younger partners, a callous but scarily effective man named Gabe Freston, raise his hand. “Freston?” he says.
“I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry, Jude,” says Freston, and around him, everyone murmurs their agreement.
He wants to make the moment light, to say—because it is true—“That’s the first time I’ve heard you be so sincere since I told you what your bonus would be last year, Freston,” but he doesn’t, just takes a deep breath.
“Thank you, Gabe,” he says. “Thanks, all of you. Now everyone—back to work,” and they scatter.
The surgery will be on a Monday, and although he stays at the office late on Friday, he doesn’t go in on Saturday.
That afternoon, he packs a bag for the hospital; that evening, he and Willem have dinner at the tiny sushi place where they first celebrated the Last Supper.
His final sessions with Patrizia and Yasmin had been on Thursday; Andy calls early on Saturday to tell him that he has the X-rays back, and that although the infection hasn’t budged, it also hasn’t spread.
“Obviously, it won’t be a problem after Monday,” he says, and he swallows, hard, just as he had when Andy had said earlier that week, “You won’t have this foot pain after next Monday.
” He remembers then that it is not the problem that is being eradicated; it is the source of the problem that is being eradicated.
One is not the same as the other, but he supposes he has to be grateful, finally, for eradication, however it is delivered.
He eats his final meal on Sunday at seven p.m.; the surgery is at eight the next morning, and so he is to have no more food, no more medication, nothing to drink, for the rest of the night.
An hour later, he and Willem descend in the elevator to the ground floor, for his last walk on his own legs.
He has made Willem promise him this walk, and even before they begin—they will go south on Greene one block to Grand, then west just another block to Wooster, then up Wooster four blocks to Houston, then back east to Greene and south to their apartment—he isn’t sure he’ll be able to finish.
Above them, the sky is the color of bruises, and he remembers, suddenly, being forced out onto the street, naked, by Caleb.
He lifts up his left leg and begins. Down the quiet street they walk, and at Grand, as they are turning right, he takes Willem’s hand, which he never does in public, but now he holds it close, and they turn right again and begin moving up Wooster.
He had wanted so badly to complete this circuit, but perversely, his inability to do so—at Spring, still two blocks south of Houston, Willem glances at him and, without even asking, starts walking him back east to Greene Street—reassures him: he is making the right decision.
He has pressed up against the inevitable, and he has made the only choice he could make, not just for Willem’s sake, but for his own.
The walk has been almost unbearable, and when he gets back to the apartment, he is surprised to feel that his face is wet with tears.
The next morning, Harold and Julia meet them at the hospital, looking gray and frightened.
He can tell they are trying to remain stoic for him; he hugs and kisses them both, assures them he’ll be fine, that there’s nothing to worry about.
He is taken away to be prepped. Since the injury, the hair on his legs has always grown unevenly, around and between the scars, but now he is shaved clean above and below his kneecaps.
Andy comes in, holds his face in his hands, and kisses him on his forehead.
He doesn’t say anything, just takes out a marker and draws a series of dashes, like Morse code signals, in inverted arcs a few inches below the bottoms of both knees, then tells him he’ll be back, but that he’ll send Willem in.
Willem comes over and sits on the edge of his bed, and they hold each other’s hands in silence.
He is about to say something, make some stupid joke, when Willem begins to cry, and not just cry, but keen, bending over and moaning, sobbing like he has never seen anyone sob.
“Willem,” he says, desperately, “Willem, don’t cry: I’m going to be fine.
I really am. Don’t cry. Willem, don’t cry.
” He sits up in the bed, wraps his arms around Willem.
“Oh, Willem,” he sighs, near tears himself.
“Willem, I’m going to be okay. I promise you.
” But he can’t soothe him, and Willem cries and cries.
He senses that Willem is trying to say something, and he rubs his back, asking him to repeat himself. “Don’t go,” he hears Willem say. “Don’t leave me.”
“I promise I won’t,” he says. “I promise. Willem—it’s an easy surgery. You know I have to come out on the other side so Andy can lecture me some more, right?”
It is then that Andy walks in. “Ready, campers?” he asks, and then he sees and hears Willem. “Oh god,” he says, and he comes over, joins their huddle. “Willem,” he says, “I promise I’ll take care of him like he’s my own, you know that, right? You know I won’t let anything happen to him?”
“I know,” they hear Willem gulp, at last. “I know, I know.”
Finally, they are able to calm Willem down, who apologizes and wipes at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Willem says, but he shakes his head, and pulls on Willem’s hand until he brings his face to his own, kisses him goodbye. “Don’t be,” he tells him.
Outside the operating room, Andy brings his head down to his, and kisses him again, this time on his cheek.
“I’m not going to be able to touch you after this,” he says.
“I’ll be sterile.” The two of them grin, suddenly, and Andy shakes his head.
“Aren’t you getting a little old for this kind of puerile humor? ” he asks.
“Aren’t you ?” he asks. “You’re almost sixty.”
“Never.”
Then they are in the operating room, and he is gazing at the bright white disk of light above him. “Hello, Jude,” says a voice behind him, and he sees it’s the anesthesiologist, a friend of Andy’s named Ignatius Mba, whom he’s met before at one of Andy and Jane’s dinner parties.
“Hi, Ignatius,” he says.
“Count backward from ten for me,” says Ignatius, and he begins to, but after seven, he is unable to count any further; the last thing he feels is a tingling in his right toes.
Three months later. It is Thanksgiving again, and they are having it at Greene Street.
Willem and Richard have cooked everything, arranged everything, while he slept.
His recovery has been harder and more complicated than anticipated, and he has contracted infections, twice.
For a while he was on a feeding tube. But Andy was right: he has kept both knees.
In the hospital, he would wake, telling Harold and Julia, telling Willem, that it felt like there was an elephant sitting on his feet, rocking back and forth on its rump until his bones turned into cracker dust, into something finer than ash.
But they never told him that he was imagining this; they only told him that the nurse had just added a painkiller to his IV drip for this very purpose, and that he would be feeling better soon.
Now he has these phantom pains less and less frequently, but they haven’t disappeared entirely.
And he is still very tired, he is still very weak, and so Richard has placed a mauve velvet wingback chair on casters—one that India sometimes uses for sittings—for him at the head of the table, so he can lean his head against its wings when he feels depleted.
That dinner is Richard and India, Harold and Julia, Malcolm and Sophie, JB and his mother, and Andy and Jane, whose children are visiting Andy’s brother in San Francisco.
He starts to give a toast, thanking everyone for everything they have given him and done for him, but before he gets to the person he wants to thank most—Willem, sitting to his right—he finds he cannot continue, and he looks up from his paper at his friends and sees that they are all going to cry, and so he stops.
He is enjoying the dinner, amused even by how people keep adding scoops of different food to his plate, even though he hasn’t eaten much of his first serving, but he is so sleepy, and eventually he burrows back into the chair and closes his eyes, smiling as he listens to the familiar conversation, the familiar voices, fill the air around him.
Eventually Willem notices that he is falling asleep, and he hears him stand.
“Okay,” he says, “time for your diva exit,” and turns the chair from the table and begins pushing it away toward their bedroom, and he uses the last of his strength to answer everyone’s laughter, their song of goodbyes, to peek out around the wing of the chair and smile at them, letting his fingers trail behind him in an airy, theatrical wave.
“Stay,” he calls out as he is taken from them.
“Please stay. Please stay and give Willem some decent conversation,” and they agree they will; it isn’t even seven, after all—they have hours and hours.
“I love you,” he calls to them, and they shout it back at him, all of them at once, although even in their chorus, he can still distinguish each individual voice.
At the doorway to their bedroom, Willem lifts him—he has lost so much weight, and without his prostheses is so less storklike a form, that now even Julia can lift him—and carries him to their bed, helps him undress, helps him remove his temporary prostheses, folds the covers back over him.
He pours him a glass of water, hands him his pills: an antibiotic, a fistful of vitamins.
He swallows them all as Willem watches, and then for a while Willem sits on the bed next to him, not touching him, but simply near.
“Promise me you’ll go out there and stay up late,” he tells Willem, and Willem shrugs.