Chapter III #4
I notice his oxygen has dipped. I press the cannula back into his nostrils. ‘Take some deep breaths.’
‘Deep is relative,’ he says. I model some big breaths. He watches and imitates me as best he can and gets it back up to 93. He continues to stare at me.
It’s hard to return his gaze, the way he is looking at me. ‘You are so beautiful, babe,’ he says.
Babe. A word from another universe. It’s physically disorienting.
‘Yash,’ his uncle says from across the room.
But Yash ignores him. He sees I have something on my mind. ‘What?’ he says. ‘What is it?’
But Uncle Percy is louder. ‘Listen up, you two love birds. You need to tell us. What do you want for dinner? I cannot put another carton of pork lo mein in my delicate stomach,’ he says, patting his belly.
‘Looks like you have a pig or two in there already,’ Yash says.
‘I got a barnyard in here, Yashie.’
They decide on Italian.
Aunt Sue offers to go in her car. Jared holds up his phone. He can get it delivered.
‘You can’t deliver to a hospital,’ Uncle Percy says.
Jared explains.
‘Jordash?’ Uncle Percy says.
‘Door Dash,’ Jared says slowly.
‘Jordash is clothes.’
‘I got this,’ Jared says calmly, no irritation, then begins taking people’s orders.
Yash smiles at me and seems not to remember his last question.
‘Love in your novels, I think, acts as a form of hope. Why hope? Do you believe this?’
I was on stage in Reykjavik with my Icelandic editor, Birna Gunarsdóttir. We’d never met before this trip, my last before Jack got sick.
‘Most people ask me about sex, not love.’
‘I know. I have seen this online. But I want to know about love.’
‘Isn’t love a form of hope?’ I said.
‘No. Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.’ She wore all black and bright red lipstick and I saw in her face how serious she was. After a few seconds she forced herself to soften it.
She had the audience’s attention.
‘True. It’s all those things,’ I said. ‘But where would we be if we didn’t feel it? I think it’s the only form of hope we have. For our survival, I mean. What good is any other virtue without love?’
‘In literature love is a weakness. Othello is easily manipulated by Iago because of his love for Desdemona. Anna Karenina throws herself under a train.’
‘Othello places his trust in Iago, not Desdemona. Anna Karenina’s society does not allow her to be with Vronsky. Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.’
She pursed her red lips and moved on. ‘I have read in several interviews from years ago that Independent People is one of your favorite books. Is this true?’
‘It is. Maybe my very favorite.’
There was some spontaneous clapping from the audience.
‘Why? Why this one about a miserable sheep farmer?’
‘You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it.
And it preserves it, like a time capsule.
’ Even though nearly everyone in the audience is Icelandic and English is not their first language, I can feel that they are with me.
‘When I think of reading Independent People, I remember the summer air coming through our windows and the quilt we had on our bed and my boys, so little then. And I remember Silas, my husband, reading it right after I did and we started calling each other Bjartur.’ The audience burst out laughing and I figured it was because I’d butchered the pronunciation of his name.
Birna was amused, too. ‘You called each other Bjartur? Why?’
‘As a term of endearment.’
More laughter.
‘I think this has never happened in our country, making a pet name from this hard and complicated character,’ Birna said, smiling and shaking her head. ‘How did this book come to find you? Most Americans don’t know it.’
‘A friend gave it to me.’ For a moment I was barefoot in our road, watching his car disappear.
I could tell Birna wanted to ask more, but she sensed something and veered away. She smiled, thanked me for coming to Reykjavik, and opened it up to questions from the audience.
When the food delivery is close, I leave the room with Jared and Aunt Bev to help carry up the bags.
At the elevator bank I try to give him cash to help him cover dinner, but he won’t take it.
A door opens and the three of us get in.
Aunt Bev is looking at me. I only met one of Yash’s aunts in Knoxville, Aunt Sue, not Bev or Mo.
I remember him saying one was nice and one was mean.
I’m not sure which Aunt Bev is, but she is glaring at me now.
‘You were the one.’
I shake my head.
‘You were. He never recovered,’ she says. ‘And if your books are any indication, he’s certainly not the only one you’ve chewed up and spat out.’
The door opens. I hope to God she’s the mean one.
We bring the food up to the family room and set it up buffet-style.
A nurse brings us paper plates and utensils.
I make plates for Yash and Sam and bring them back to the room.
Nearly everyone else has gone down the hall to eat.
The room is dim and they are talking quietly.
Sam thanks me and tells me to come back with a plate of my own.
Yash looks worse. He waves away the food.
In the family room most people have gotten their dinner and are seated in a big ring around the room. As I fill my plate a bald man with a lot of aftershave on tells me the carbonara is good. I thank him and scoop some onto my plate.
‘You have no idea who I am, do you?’
I give him a hard stare. I imagine hair on his head. ‘Oh my God. EJ?’
He tips an imaginary hat at me. I know that he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, that he and Marni broke up, that he has a new family now.
‘How are you?’ I stammer.
‘I’m fine. A little beat up over all this. But it’s life, right?’ He loads his plate with seconds. ‘He’s just gonna get there a little before the rest of us. I only wish things had been different for him.’
Yash would say the same thing about EJ. ‘He’s so happy everyone’s here.’
‘Yeah, everyone’s here for a day or two.’ We stand with our full plates by the window. ‘But you’ve done well for yourself.’
I hold up my fork. ‘Please don’t tell me I was the one who got away.’
‘You got away all right.’
‘I was pushed.’
He shrugs. ‘He pushes everyone away at one time or another. It’s temporary. You knew that.’
‘I didn’t. I didn’t know that. At the time it felt like the end of the world.’
Sam comes up to us, apologizes for interrupting. ‘Can you come back to the room, Jordan?’
‘Excuse me, EJ.’
‘You go to Yasher. He needs you.’
I follow Sam down the hallway. Outside the room he says, ‘He gets this way at night. Really agitated. I’ve asked the nurse to give him some Ativan. I just—’ He looks up to the ceiling. ‘Maybe you could go in. Maybe you could, like, sing to him?’
‘Sing?’
‘You know. Some of your songs. About fairs.’ He grins at me.
It’s a shock when people remember what you remember. Those few weeks, many, many springs ago, when I sang Sam to sleep. ‘Sure.’ I don’t think I ever sang to Yash.
He opens the door for me and I go in alone. Yash has a terrible look in his eyes. I sit down in my chair and he clutches at me.
‘It’s not good. It’s not good, Hink.’ He’s shivering.
‘The nurse is coming.’
‘She won’t help.’
‘She will. She’ll help you sleep. Take some breaths.’
‘I can’t. I can’t take any more breaths.’
‘Yes, you can. Do you know about square breathing?’
He shakes his head but looks at me hopefully.
‘I do it with Jack. It helps a lot.’
‘With the pain?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That poor kid.’
‘It’s okay. He’s okay.’ I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know how his day has gone. My phone’s been in my bag in the corner since I got here. ‘You’re okay. Here we go. Take a breath in then hold three seconds, then breathe out and hold three more and breathe in again.’
His breaths are so short, so shallow. Maybe it isn’t good for him to pause. ‘Maybe one-second holds,’ I say.
He nods. He reminds me of Jack when it’s bad.
And then I’m singing. I sing about sailing away, my own true love. He looks at me with such surprise—You? Singing Dylan?—and I smile and my voice gets steadier. We both relax a bit.
When I sing this song for my boys, it’s like a fairy tale, with the mountains and diamonds and western winds. Here with Yash it becomes something different, our own saga of coming and going, of finding and losing each other, of letting go.
I sing and he grips my hands hard and his whole body shudders. I come to the line about wanting the same thing again tomorrow. I barely get it out.
I pause when the nurse comes in with the Ativan.
I start up again when she leaves. It’s a long song and it’s hard to push the words out, each line laden with sorrow and regret.
Every image seems like a metaphor for loss.
I can’t look at Yash. I can only look at his hands in mine.
Finally I get to the last lines. Yes, there is something she could bring back to him.
Boots of Spanish leather. Yash’s eyes are closed and his trembling has died down.
‘Lovely,’ Sam says quietly.
I turn.
He’s in the doorway. He sees my tears and comes to put a hand on my shoulder. It’s warm and trembling. We watch Yash sleep.
An orderly rolls in Sam’s cot and he helps her set it up at the foot of Yash’s bed. He takes out sheets from a cabinet and makes up the bed. When he leans over, his T-shirt rides up and the band of his blue boxers shows above the waist of his jeans like it always did, way before it became a trend.