Chapter III #2
I look at Yash’s oxygen. It’s flashing between 89 and 91. I get up and reclaim my chair, push his cannula in further.
He says, ‘I want to tell you something.’
‘Tell me.’ I scootch my chair as close as possible to his bed and lean over the bedrail.
He laces his fingers through mine. ‘I want to tell you that I’m not angry at you anymore.’
I laugh. He’s serious. ‘Angry at me?’
‘For a long time I felt like you sort of enjoyed making me suffer, punishing me, stringing me’—he pauses to breathe—‘along and extracting more and more apologies without ever forgiving me.’
‘I remember an elephant poem. And a paragraph about Molly the prostitute—Céline was a Nazi sympathizer, by the way. I don’t remember an apology.’
‘I apologized so many times. In so many letters.’
Did he? I have no recollection of this. All I remember is other people’s writing, other people’s thoughts copied out in his hand.
‘You thought I was toying with you?’ I say.
‘I thought it was pretty immature that you wouldn’t talk to me for three years when we had been in what to my mind was a pretty serious relationship.’
‘Oh. A pretty serious relationship? But not serious enough to show up in New York. More of a drive-in-the-opposite-direction kind of serious.’
‘I worried we still couldn’t have this conversation.’
‘You’ve never tried to have this conversation.’
‘I’ve tried for years. You have never let me explain.’
‘What is there to explain? I was there. You weren’t.’
‘There were reasons for that.’
‘We had something kind of amazing.’
‘I know.’
‘And you threw it away.’
‘I didn’t. I didn’t mean to. I freaked out. Temporarily. I was twenty-three.’
‘I was twenty-three, too.’
There is a flurry of activity in the doorway and three women sweep into the room, sisters maybe, fluffy coats way too warm for Atlanta, their hair streaked blond in the exact same way, dark roots showing intentionally.
‘Oh, no way,’ Yash says to them.
‘Yes fucking way,’ the oldest one says.
They crowd around his bed. Big product and perfume smells. I get up and stand in the doorway with his mom.
Yash shakes his head. ‘You’ve come too far.’ He looks at me, asking for a truce. ‘It’s Marni and her girls, Hink.’
Marni. She and I hug, and marvel at her daughters, grown women now. Tears are already sending their mascara down their cheeks. She takes my chair and the girls lean against the bedrail.
‘Pigeons,’ Yash says reaching out his free hand. ‘No fussing about me. I’m fine. I’m really fine.’
This makes them cry harder.
I can’t make small talk right now. I feel like my lungs are on fire.
I slip out of the room and look for Sam to find out what he talked to the nurse about.
He’s not around so I keep walking to the bathroom.
Yash’s posse is spread out over this whole floor.
Brent and Aunt Bev are on their computers in the family room.
EJ has found a little alcove for a work call, and Jared and Uncle Percy are in the kitchen eating ramen noodles beside the microwave.
In the bathroom stall I look at my phone. Silas has texted. All good here. Safe flight xo.
I look at the time. The numbers make no sense to me.
My noon flight has already left.
I call Silas’ phone.
‘Hello, Madre,’ Jack says.
The sound of his voice pushes everything else out of my mind. ‘Hello, sweet pea. How’s it going?’
‘Okay.’ He’s not in pain but something is preoccupying him.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’
I wait.
‘I just. I just want to get this procedure over and done with.’ He says the word ‘procedure‘ the way the Houston doctor said it. Her procedure was a seven-hour surgery.
‘This will be the last one for a long time.’
‘I just—’
‘I know.’
‘No, I don’t think you do know.’
I wait.
‘I’m like a ghost in school. Just when I start to sort of be like a regularish kid who actually shows up, I have to leave again. Otis has a girlfriend.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
I wait.
‘She wears funny shoes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Old-fashioned. They’re weird. I’m getting behind in everything.’
‘In girls, you mean.’
‘In girls, in sports, in Spanish. Alex used a word I didn’t know today. Pájaro. Do you know what it means?’
‘Bird.’
‘Even you know it!’
‘I did live in Spain.’
‘I’m just behind. And I want to go on that trip next year. It’s part of the curriculum. You don’t have to pay for it.’
‘You will go on that trip. I promise.’ Please, dear God.
‘Do you think it’s possible for aliens to come and infect us like a virus with their thoughts?’
‘You are not allowed to watch that show.’
‘I’m not watching that show. Otis was telling me about it.’
Otis, the kid who told him about the atom bomb in kindergarten, porn in second grade, who never lets Jack’s surgeries, pain, or months of absences get in the way of a good friendship. The most loyal, foul-mouthed, naughty, generous friend you could ever wish for.
‘What are you at right now?’
‘One.’
‘Truthfully?’
‘Yes.’
‘You take your pill?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Take it before it creeps up on you.’
‘How’s Yash in the Tree?’ That’s what my boys call him, Yash in the Tree.
‘He’s all right. He’s not in pain.’
‘Morphine?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good stuff.’
Not what the mother of a twelve-year-old wants to hear.
‘I’ll be home later today. Early evening probably.’
‘Okay, cool. Otis asked if I want to be a thruple.’
‘Wow.’
‘You know what that is?’
‘Mmhmm.’
‘I said no.’
‘I think that was wise.’
‘I don’t want to share my first girlfriend.’
‘Or maybe any girlfriend.’
‘Down the line I might feel differently.’
Down the line. Oh, this kid of mine. I have to remember this conversation verbatim for Silas.
‘Otis says it was her idea. He says she was going to ask me out, then she heard I’d be out of school for a month so she asked Otis instead. They want to come visit me when I’m back.’
‘Even if you’re not a thruple?’
‘Yeah. I hope she wears those shoes. So you can see them. Mom?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you think, really really honestly and not just to keep my hopes up, do you think I’ll be able to go on that trip to Mexico?’
‘I do. I really, really do.’ And I do. It is my job to believe that, to know that, with my whole heart.
‘I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. And last night.’
‘You should go do that after we hang up.’
‘I can feel crud stuck in places.’ He is moving his tongue across his teeth. ‘Did Yash say that thing about his teeth being shelves for food?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think about that a lot.’
‘Me too.’
‘You do have teeth like that. You always have food in them.’
I laugh. ‘It’s a problem. I should probably get braces.’
‘You wouldn’t, would you?’
‘You don’t want a mother with braces?’
‘Mom.’
‘I could get the invisible kind, that look like plastic wrap and make you slur your words a little.’
‘Mom.’
‘I won’t. Can you tell Dad I’ll be on a later flight? And I’ll grab a cab.’
‘Okay. I’m going to let you go now.’
I laugh. He’s imitating Silas’ mother. ‘Brush your teeth. I love you.’
I stay in the stall and book a flight for early evening.
Outside 508 Marni comforts her girls. ‘They had to put a mask on him and we couldn’t talk to him after that,’ she says.
She comes closer and says to me quietly, ‘God, he looks dreadful.’
Does he? I can’t see that anymore. I nod anyway.
She takes my hand. I’ve never done so much handholding in my life.
‘It’s good you’re here.’ She looks at her watch. ‘Oh shit. We have to go.’
‘We need to say goodbye,’ one of the pigeons says.
‘We will.’ She opens the door and they disappear through it.
I go back down the hallway and sit in the alcove that EJ has vacated.
Was he hiding from Marni? Two nurses are nearby, chatting near the opening of their station where they come in and out.
They are talking quietly about someone named Kelly.
She never takes the tray, she sees it but she never takes it, so annoying.
I sit there motionless, numb, knowing Marni and her girls are doing what I will have to do in a few hours.
I don’t understand Marni coming for fifteen minutes.
It makes no sense. None of it makes any sense.
I return to the room. Yash has a mask on. His oxygen is at 96. Sam is poking his neck.
Yash puts his hand out to me. ‘Feel that,’ he says, a bit muffled through the mask. He tilts his neck for me to poke too.
My finger sinks in, worse than before.
Sam’s phone buzzes. He looks at the screen. ‘He’s on his way.’
‘I’m inflating,’ Yash says.
‘We’ll ask the doctor.’
‘Who’s on the way?’ I say.
‘His boss,’ Sam says.
The DA arrives in the doorway in a charcoal suit without a crease.
He is tall and striking. Yash has said he’s planning a run for Congress.
Yash has been writing his speeches. I vacate my chair but he doesn’t sit.
He shakes Yash’s hand then rests his forearms on the bed railing and says, ‘Well, this sucks.’ He speaks like a voiceover.
Yash lowers his mask. ‘It’s not optimal.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve seen worse. I know that. How did it go?’
‘Yesterday?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Putty in my hands. I stole your line about not one good deed but the habit of goodness.’ His voice is mesmerizing.
‘I might have borrowed a tad from Aristotle.’
The DA nods twice. Then his face splits open. The smooth veneer cracks. He bends down closer and speaks quietly in a deep murmur. ‘I will never work with anyone as gifted again, Yash Thakkar. No one will ever come close. It’s been an honor and a privilege.’
‘The privilege has been mine, sir,’ Yash says.
They clasp hands for longer than I expect.
I signal to Yash that his oxygen is too low.
‘Pull yourself together, councilor, and go work the room.’ Yash says, and tugs his mask back up over his mouth and nose.
The DA moves slowly around the perimeter, introducing himself, repeating each name. He gives Yash’s mom a hug.
When he gets to me, I tell him my name and he says, ‘I have all your books.’
I look at Yash. ‘You foisted them on him, too?’
I see a smile beneath his foggy mask.
‘I’m a fan. The one about the musicians? Loved it.’