So they did.
Jeffrey had been diagnosed with ALL, which stands for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a form of blood cancer in which certain types of white blood cells become deformed and multiply rapidly. Because the deformed cells, which are called blasts, don’t do the jobs they are supposed to do and because they compete with the good kinds of blood cells for survival, the disease is 100% fatal if it isn’t treated. The reason why his nosebleed had been so bad is that the leukemia had drastically reduced the number of platelets in Jeffrey’s blood so that it wasn’t clotting normally. That was also why he was bruising so easily. When he had first arrived in Philly, the doctors had run a huge battery of tests to determine how bad Jeffrey’s cancer was, whether it had spread to other systems in his body, and how likely he was to recover. Things weren’t as ugly as they could have been—the cancer hadn’t gone to other systems—but they weren’t great, either. My baby brother had what they considered a “moderate-risk” case. That meant his odds of surviving this were over 50%, but not by much.
Which meant his chances of dying were under 50% but, again, not by much.
No wonder my mom was weepy and my dad was a zombie.
We talked a little more, about things like scheduling—my mom and Jeffrey would be in Philadelphia at least two days a week for the first month of treatment—and how to handle telling people. It turned out that my mom’s parents already knew and so did a lot of extended family members. The reason nobody had called the house about it yet was that my mom had asked that nobody call or visit until she and Jeffrey were home. My mom’s principal knew and so did some of her closest friends, but most of her school didn’t know. I didn’t know what my dad had said or not said at work, but from his general level of communication that week, I had a feeling he had been clammed up pretty tight with everyone. On the other hand, his coworkers would have had to be blind and deaf not to have noticed the sudden changes in what was now passing for his personality.
Jeffrey’s school would have to know, of course.
My mom had another thought, too. And what about your school, Steven? Would you like me to call your school counselor? We could have a conference call with your teachers.
Or you could just shoot me now and get it over with.
Steven! It makes perfect sense to alert the school staff to a situation where one of the students might need additional support.
What additional support? A group hug in homeroom every morning? Maybe my teachers could write you little notes in my agenda book. Or how about you sign me up for a nice counseling group? Perhaps you could make me look like more of a dork to my peers. Do you think you could get me a seat on the short bus?
WHAT has gotten into you, Steven? I’m trying to help you here. The doctors told me that siblings of (she kind of had to swallow before she could get this next part out) cancer patients find the experience very stressful and…
Stressful? STRESSFUL? Why should this be stressful? Just because my mom and brother disappear for a week and nobody tells me anything, and then they come back, and my brother is barfing right and left, with bruises all over him? And he can’t even stay awake, and his little back is all…all…
Then I busted out crying, which I’m sure was a great comfort to everyone. At least, it shut me up for a while. My mom put her arms around me, and we stayed like that so long that my neck was getting a crick in it. Now, normally I am not the biggest fan of being hugged by my mother in broad daylight at this point in my adolescent years, but I must say, it felt pretty nice right then.
When I finally pulled away a bit, I looked at my mom and pleaded, Please don’t call my school. I’m fine.
(Yeah, teenage boys who are fine always cry on their mothers’ shoulders until they leave a snot trail.)
Okay, Steven—for now, we won’t call.
So they didn’t call, and if any of my mom’s friends told their kids, it didn’t get back to me for those first few weeks. As for me, I was always the perfect big brother for Jeffrey, the silent microwave-oven mate that my dad seemed to want, and completely sarcastic and horrible to my mom. Don’t ask me why I dumped everything on her, but I did. Meanwhile, at school, I still kept plowing along, practicing drums, writing journals, completely bagging all of my homework assignments, and faking human interaction with the people around me.
Inside my head, though, I had a whole new activity: bargaining.
TAKE ME!
Once I was forced to believe that Jeffrey really had cancer, my mind played another big trick on me. I started to think that if I just made the right promises to God, he would magically make Jeffrey all better again. And the promises just popped into my head, right and left, day and night. This made for a tough couple of weeks.
I’d be in the lunch line at school, and a pack of Ring Dings would catch my eye. I’d say to myself, “OK, if I don’t eat those, Jeffrey will get better.” Or I’d promise things like, “If I never hit Jeffrey again, he’ll get better.” About twenty times a day, too, I’d swear that I’d never think impure thoughts about Renee Albert again if Jeffrey would be all right. But let’s face it—I am a thirteen-year-old American male. I have no willpower. So every night I’d go to bed totally convinced that I was going to gain twenty pounds and be a fat, violent pervert forever and that my little brother was doomed.
Then in the morning, I’d start all over, like, “I’ll floss every single day, even between the molars, if…”
Of course, there were times when I wasn’t bargaining, but those were generally just times when I was busy BREAKING the promises. It was like the exact opposite of Lent; I would swear to give things up and then immediately do them. I was a mess.
When I realized how bad I was at giving things up, I tried to find other deals I could make with God. One day in gym, we were hitting softballs with this pitching machine that the baseball team uses for training—which we almost never get to use, but it was a really nice day and the teachers must have been desperate to get outside one last time before winter started. So I was telling myself, “All righty, if I hit this next pitch, Jeffrey is OK.” Then I’d miss, because with my thick glasses, I basically have no depth perception at all. So immediately I’d be at it again, “OK…how ‘bout two out of three?” Strike two! “Four for six?” Whiff! “Seven out of ten?” Naturally, I know what a spazmo I am at sports (yeah, I know drummers are supposed to be coordinated, but it doesn’t matter how coordinated you are if you’re as blind as a bat), so I know I should have found some smarter bets to make.
And I did. By the end of the first week, I was scrounging at the bottom of the barrel for deals to make. Here’s a pathetic one: “Here goes a good offer, Lord. If that bird on that tree over there flies away within ten seconds, Jeffrey is cured.” That was in the middle of math class, while I was staring out the window as the class checked the homework I hadn’t done. Unfortunately, I got distracted by the teacher’s despairing cry.
Alper, any chance you can answer number 37?
When I looked back out there, the bird was long gone, probably scared off by the outburst of yelling that was going on in my classroom. I was fairly certain it had been longer than ten seconds between when I first looked away and the moment when the teacher’s attempt to engage me devolved into top-volume, random threats to my safety, but we’ll never know for sure.
As usual, drumming was my big escape from all this reality stuff. Rehearsals and practice times by myself were like these little islands of “OK” in a vast sea of “Holy crap!” So I hopped from little musical island to little musical island. One day, a weird thing happened to me. I left math class to go to the bathroom, and on my way back, I heard this beautiful piano-playing coming from the band room. Now, of course, I knew it had to be Annette—she was the only unbelievable keyboard prodigy in the building, and I knew that she had this independent-study piano period. But when I walked over and stuck my head in the band room door, I couldn’t really process what I was seeing. There was this truly pretty girl sitting at the pi
ano, with this amazing posture and her hair falling long around her face in a quite non-Annette-ish way and a serene look I had never noticed on her face before. She finished the piece and looked up after a long, long time—I would be toasted like a barbecue wiener when I got back to math—and blushed. She actually BLUSHED. It was like, as soon as the music disappeared, so did “Smooth Annette.”
Then she mumbled, Chopin.
What?
That piece. It’s Chopin. I’m getting ready for an audition at Juilliard next month, but I’m not nearly ready yet.
You’re kidding, right? That was…uhhh…the best thing I’ve ever seen, ever. Ever. What’s at Juilliard?
It’s a famous music school in Manhattan. They have an intensive program for high school students, every Saturday from 8:00 to 1:00.
So you’d have to get up around 6:00 to get there?
I’d have to get up around 4:30 to get there, but my parents are willing to drive me, and…
Don’t you want to have some free time on Saturdays?
Steven, this is…oh, forget it. Wanna try something?
Suddenly, another new Annette had sprung up. She had kind of a mischievous, flirty grin on her face.
Sure.
Sit down at the drum set. Go ahead. Now get ready to play what you hear, OK?
Ummm…all right.
And she burst into this fantastic, complicated jazz thing. So I tried to play along with the ding ding-a-ding ride cymbal thing that always works for jazz and immediately got the beat all turned around and messed up. Annette stopped playing and laughed. She looked at me and jumped in again. Again, I got ruined in seconds. So she jumped in for another go-around. And another. And another.
Finally, I had to ask, What…is…this?
Oh, it’s just a little something I picked up off a CD this week. It’s called “Take Five.” It’s by this piano player named Dave Brubeck, from, like, 1963.
Why can’t I play it?
Well, the beat is in five-four instead of four-four.
Huh?
You have to count five beats in every measure instead of four. That’s why it’s called “Take Five.” Wanna take another shot?
Just then the bell rang, and I realized I had now officially skipped out of my first class ever. Annette just smiled that new smile again and flipped me a CD-R disc.
Here it is. Learn it!
Then she bopped off down the hall with the old bunny-on-puppet-strings walk I was used to, leaving me to wonder what had just happened. I was fairly sure that SOMETHING had.
Things were happening at home, too. Around the second week of Jeffrey’s treatment, I guess word got out among my parents’ friends that it was time to acknowledge Jeffrey’s illness. All of a sudden, as if somebody had thrown a switch, phone calls started pouring in. Cards jammed up our mailbox. A flood of concerned grown-ups started pulling up to our house with baskets and bags of food, flowers, balloons, toys. I admit that the edible stuff gave me a nice break from being the microwave Hot Pockets poster child, but the whole scene was kind of bizarre. You can picture it: The well-wisher comes in. We all thank him or (more often) her as the Tupperware is handed over. Then everybody stands around awkwardly while the visitor tries to find appropriate things to say to my parents. If I’m around, it’s weird—they ask me how I am, but I can’t actually tell them about anything that’s going on in 90% of my life—they really mean, “How are you, specifically with regard to your brother’s health crisis?” And if Jeffrey is there, it’s the biggest nightmare of all. Half of them try to be cheery, no matter what. So they act all loud and hearty, swinging Jeffrey around and telling corny jokes. Meanwhile, I’m standing there, mentally shouting at them, “Be gentle, you moron! DON’T BRUISE HIM! Please…step…away…from…the…boy.” The other half are solemn, no matter what, which is equally horrendous. Because Jeffrey is such a naturally happy kid, he wasn’t generally downhearted in those early days, despite the illness. Sometimes, he had really bad aches, especially in his legs, and he was tired a lot of the time, and the chemotherapy drugs were making him feel pretty rotten physically. But mentally, he was Jeffrey—the kid wanted to laugh and play and maybe watch Nickelodeon when things got too exhausting. And when the “frowny people” came, they almost wanted to see Jeff be a sad, sick boy—to EARN the pot roast they were carrying, or whatever. And those visits dampened his spirits, for a while at least.
After a week or so, though, Jeffrey and I made a game of it. As somebody started up our front walk, carrying the obligatory gigantic shopping bag, I would say, OK, Jeff, what do you think—frowny or cheery?
Definitely cheery, I think. We’ve had three frownies in a row.
You may be right, little man. We are due for a cheery, right about now. But she’s looking a bit nervous; I’ll bet you a buck she’s gonna be a frowner.
Then we’d open the door, smirk at each other throughout the visit, and finally assign the visitor a score after she left. No matter how horrendous the experience had been, I could usually get Jeffrey to laugh by acting like a sports commentator.
A tremendous effort by kind, old Mrs. Jacobs from the accounts payable department. She brings an apple pie—but wait a minute. It’s store-bought! That’s a mandatory deduction, Jeff. We’ll have to give her a five out of ten for baked goods. In the behavior category, she’s definitely cheery—Jeff, I owe you a dollar, you gambling shark. But she clears her throat repeatedly, a clear sign of discomfort. On the other hand, she DID pat your head pretty vigorously. I’m going to have to call that a seven.
But she smelled kind of funny, Steven. Is that points off?
Ooohhh, it is! Another mandatory deduction. Was it a dirt smell or an oldness smell?
Oldness.
OK, that’s another mandatory deduction—why don’t we call this a six, overall?
Meanwhile, my parents would tell us to be nice if they saw all this, but I got the feeling it amused my dad as much as anything else had since Jeff’s nosebleed.
Near the end of Jeffrey’s first month of treatment, there was a big dance at school—the first one of my eighth-grade year, which is supposed to be some sort of big deal. You can imagine how much I felt like getting down and partying at that point, but of course I had to go. It was on a Friday night, one of the nights when Jeffrey was home, and he had been too weak to do anything but watch videos and throw up all day. For about half an hour before dinner, I tried to get him to play checkers, but he finally just wiped the pieces off the board and told me to go away.
I could believe a lot of things and had been forced to over the course of that month, but getting kicked out of a checker game by my baby brother was pretty tough to swallow. This was the kid who used to toddle over to my bed at 6 o’clock every weekend morning to pull on my blankets so I’d get up and watch cartoons with him. This was the kid who once made me play Hungry Hungry Hippos for an hour straight, until I thought my hands were going to fall off from slamming down those dumb little levers to make the hippos’ heads move. This was the kid who had spent entire days at a time begging me to play Chutes and Ladders with him. And now he was feeling too sick to play with me.
And I know this is a selfish reaction, but my thought at the time was, “Oh, great. I’m not even at the dance yet, and I’m already getting rejected. What an ego boost!”
I was starting to get nervous about this dance. I went through every possible clothing combination I own, but somehow none of my dozens of black rock-band T-shirts seemed to match with any of my three identical pairs of Old Navy jeans. And I was still standing in my room, with only my pants on, blasting WZZO, trying not to think about how horrendous Jeffrey must be feeling while I was running off to a dance, and randomly tossing shirts to and fro when my mom appeared in the doorway.
Honey, we have to hurry if you want to get to this dance. Since your father’s at that big dinner meeting at work, I have to drive you and take Jeffrey with us. And I don’t think your brother is going to be awake much longer.
; I know, Mom. I just look like a dork-master in every shirt I own.
You do not look like a—what is it?—“dork-master,” Steven. You look like a handsome young man…although you might want to zip your fly.
Mom!
What? Should I have not told you and left it for everyone else to notice at the dance?
MOM! Would you please let me get dressed?
We don’t have time for one of your big insecurity scenes here, Steven. Let’s see what you have in your closet.
She opened the closet doors and started thumbing through the clothes I had hanging there, giving little motherly comments.
This one looks great with your brown eyes…This one makes you look nice and muscular…
MOM!
This one is too formal…This one is stained. WHY is a dirty shirt hanging in your closet? This one is PERFECT. Now put it on.
MOM! That one is purple. I haven’t worn it ONCE since the day Grandma gave it to me. I’ll look like Barney!
Oh, Steven. Barney is purple and GREEN. You will look nothing like him. Plus, this isn’t purple, it’s eggplant.
Sure, Mom. Chicks dig a dude who’s sporting the latest eggplant turtleneck styles.
I grabbed any old black shirt off of the floor, stalked past my mom as I pulled it on, and went downstairs. Jeffrey was sitting on the couch looking miserable, but he had enough energy to embarrass me in front of my mom.
Do you think RENEE ALBERT will dance with you, Steven? You think she’s HOT, right?
Oh, leave me alone, shrimp boy. Renee Albert has a boyfriend.
Will you dance with ANNETTE? She’s pretty, too. And she knows you’re alive.
Where does he GET this stuff? I don’t know, Jeffrey. Usually there’s a big line of girls waiting to dance with me, so it depends on how soon Annette gets there. There’s just not a big enough supply of Steven Alper around to meet the demand.
That’s a joke, right?
Yeah, it’s a joke. I’ll probably just stand in the corner, trying not to be noticed, until the decoration committee accidentally packs me into a box at the end of the night. There I will lie, crammed between rolls of crepe paper, until the New Year’s dance two months from now.