His father ceased to ease his spindly legs over the side of the bed. “But what about Glynis? Your dad is the personification of one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. You told me yourself. I mustn’t come near my daughter-in-law. You warned me I could kill her.”
“C-diff? If we’re going biblical here, then Glynis has hit the Book of Revelation. She’s in the end of days, Dad. Being around a little more germ warfare isn’t going to make any c-difference.”
“Are you sure?”
“I—I’ve never done this before. You’ve been through it countless times with your parishioners. We could use your company. I could use your advice.”
“Advice? On what?”
Shep took a breath. “How to help my wife die.”
When Shep informed his father on the long drive back to New York that they were all going to Africa, the old man took the news in stride—merely remarking with standard Knacker pragmatism that unfortunately his passport had expired. (Shep explained that It’s Easy, Inc., in midtown could turn around an application overnight for a price, and when his dad asked how much, Shep said with a blissful smile, “I don’t care.”) The summer they’d spent together in Kenya may have made the “dark continent” seem less forbidding. For that matter, his father didn’t seem bothered by any itinerary that took him away from Twilight Glens. The sing-alongs, apparently, had not been a big success.
Shep wondered if he should have said goodbye to Beryl. But she’d been incensed when he suggested transferring their father to a public nursing home a few miles away; on being informed that instead her father was being kidnapped to Africa, she’d have gone apoplectic. Besides, she’d made it all too plain just what she thought of her brother’s aspirations to any so-called Afterlife. At least now that the nursing home would no longer ravage the family’s finances like a necrotic disease, she could keep the house. If that seemed a generous reward for short-of-generous behavior, in Shep’s experience the house of one’s childhood was more curse than windfall. And even if the past failed to exert its commonly crippling influence, Beryl would find those tall three stories on Mt. Forist Street considerably less of a jackpot once she paid her own fuel bills.
The drive was interrupted more than once for pit stops. After half-carrying his father to a gas-station men’s room, Shep would support the torso with one arm and work the pajama bottoms below the buttocks with his free hand—a move at which, from his wife’s periods of similar incapacity, he had grown expert. He’d leave his father to get on with things with the stall door closed, though this pretense of privacy would never last. Dad’s assurances that he could see to his own cleaning up proved exaggerated, and of course getting the pajama bottoms up again entailed more assistance. In the Middle East, it was considered the height of humiliation to glimpse your father’s genitals, but for Shep it was merely another exercise in getting real. So they both had penises. Big deal.
Inevitably, during the last late-night leg in northern Connecticut, too many stations and diners were closed. His father didn’t make it. A stinging brown smell infused the car, and his father started to cry.
“Dad,” said Shep. “I’ve been up to my elbows in shit for months, and I’m not being figurative, either. I still love my wife, and I’m intimately acquainted with her body’s every ooze and spew. I’m going to take care of you now, and instead of hiring some stranger to wipe your backside I’ll wipe it myself. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The only people who ought to be embarrassed are me and Beryl, for ever offloading the ass-wiping onto someone else.”
They got back to Elmsford at 1:00 a.m. After fifteen hours of driving, Shep should have felt bone tired. But ever since Pemba had been resurrected from pitiful pipe dream to definitive destination, he’d been riding a curious high. There was still a spring in his step as he cleaned his father up and settled him on the couch in the den downstairs, close to the ground-floor bathroom.
While Glynis was still asleep Sunday morning, Shep tackled the Zach issue. Once his son allowed him reluctantly into the inner sanctum, he bounced onto the boy’s bed and announced, “We’re moving to Africa.”
Twisting around from his computer screen, Zach looked at his father with a humoring deadpan. He no more believed in the guy’s screwball “Afterlife” than Beryl did. “Uh-huh. When.”
“I have to hit the BA website, but hopefully before the end of the week.”
Zach inspected his father closely. Shep looked pleasantly back, satisfied to assess that, as expected, his son’s features were squaring up, and at sixteen the young man was almost handsome. “You’re not kidding.”
“Nope. So you’d better start collecting a few things. Pack light. Even if we can’t find everything we need on Pemba, I think Zanzibar is pretty well stocked, and we’ll be a half-hour’s flight from Stone Town.”
“We’re ‘moving to Africa’ for how long?”
“For me? Forever. For you? That’s your decision. Once you turn eighteen, you’re a free agent. But hey, you don’t like that new school anyway.”
“I thought …” Zach licked his lips. “I thought it was kids who were supposed to get these sudden ideas in their heads to do something crazy. And then it’s the parents who sit them down and make them be, you know. Realistic.”
“I’ve been ‘realistic’ for forty-nine years, sport. And when you make something real, then it is realistic. By the way, Pemba does have broadband. I knew you’d want to know.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“Well … You could go stay with your Aunt Beryl at your grandfather’s in Berlin—though as you know it’s a pretty small town. So you’d still be in the boonies, but without coconut palms or snorkeling on coral reefs. Gets pretty cold up there. Pretty soon, if I’m not mistaken, your grandfather’s house is going to get a whole lot colder, too. Alternatively, you could stay with your Aunt Deb, though you’d better be ready to do plenty of babysitting and to at least pretend to become a born-again Christian. There’s Aunt Ruby, but she’s a workaholic who won’t even make time for a boyfriend, much less a live-in nephew. Your grandma in Tucson would love to have you, although you always complain she treats you like a six-year-old. She’s seventy-three. I bet she won’t stop now.”
“You’re seriously planning to dump me on relatives?”
“No, I’m seriously planning to take you to a fascinating part of the world where you can learn to fish from a wooden canoe called an mtumbwi. Go diving. Learn Swahili. Eat the best pineapples and mangos you’ve ever tasted. And help me build a house.”
“You seem—a little weird. Like you’re on something. Sure you haven’t helped yourself to some of Mom’s meds?”
“I guess if you really don’t want to go, then you can throw yourself on the mercy of a social worker, because your father’s become a drug addict.”
“Z” had never been comfortable joking with his father, and looked pained. “How long do I have to think this over?”
“I made up my own mind in the time it took to drive from Lower Manhattan to Westchester. But that was a Friday, and the traffic was bad. So I’ll give you half that.”
“I’m supposed to decide whether to turn my whole life upside down and ‘move to Africa’ today?”
“Decisions take a split second. It’s not deciding that takes all the time.”
“But what about Mom? She’s not, you know, looking so hot. In Africa—what about doctors?”
“We’ve had enough doctors.”
“But I mean, how does she feel? Is she cool with this?”
“That,” said Shep, rising, “is what I’m about to find out.”
He slid onto the bed as Glynis stirred, and pulled her head to his lap. She nuzzled. “So how’s your dad?” she mumbled.
“Ask him yourself. He’s downstairs.”
“You brought him home?” she asked sleepily. “What for? Is that advisable?”
“It is advisable. He’s my father. I want to take him with me.”
“With you?” she mutt
ered, and sighed. Her hand on his thigh felt as delectable as it always had. “With you where?”
“Gnu?” He stroked her temple. “Remember last year, when I asked you to come to Pemba? Well, I’m asking again. And this time cancer’s no excuse.”
“Mmm?” She resettled her head. She kept it covered around others, but he had come to admire the strong, clean form of her crown without the hair.
“It’s warm,” he intoned. “The beaches are white. The trees are tall. The fish is fresh. And the breeze is spiced with cloves.”
“Hold it,” she said, opening her eyes. “I’m not dreaming.”
“I’m not, either, and I never have been. I want to take you to Pemba. I want us to go this week.”
She sat up. “Shepherd, are you mad? This is hardly the time to start talking about Africa again.”
“This is the only time left to talk about Africa. And the only time left to go.”
“Even if I don’t start that experimental drug, I have five more chemos! I may be almost through, but I’m not through.”
“No.” He placed a palm on her cheek. “You’re through.” He had meant through with any more treatments, but the assertion came out more starkly than he’d planned.
She twisted from his hand. “What, are you writing me off now, too?”
“Gnu. What is happening to you? What do you think is happening to you?”
“I’m obviously very sick, but the last couple of days I’ve been feeling better—”
“You can hardly eat anymore. You can hardly shit anymore, or climb a flight of stairs anymore. What do you think is happening to you?”
“Stop it! You’re being cruel! It’s important to stay positive, to keep trying—!”
“I think it’s cruel to keep trying.”
She started to cry. “I’m telling you, I can beat this!”
“See? It’s not your fault,” he said. “You have such a will. And then all this talk, at the hospital, about ‘fighting,’ and ‘beating,’ and ‘winning.’ Of course you’d rise to that. Try to shine in the contest. But it’s not a contest. Cancer is not a ‘battle.’ Getting sicker is not a sign of weakness. And dying,” he said the word softly but distinctly, “is not defeat.”
Glynis naturally thrived on enemies, and would readily replace the villain of disease with her husband. “What do you know about it?” she growled.
“What do I know?” He took a minute to consider. He had fought the urge to confide in Carol since Thursday night. He had resisted pouring his heart out to his father yesterday, despite the long drive, and had refrained earlier this morning from taking his son aside. He had neglected to make all the calls that the doctor expected—to Petra, to Arizona. For once his restraint did not derive, like breaking the news about Jackson, from dread of “making it real.” For Shep to inform a single soul before Glynis herself was insulting.
“Goldman didn’t want me to tell you,” Shep plunged on. “In fact, he wanted me to tell everyone else but you. So your mother would immediately fly to New York, and your sisters. Your friends would suddenly show up here all at once to recite their little speeches again, those speeches you hate, and you wouldn’t understand why. Goldman wanted them all to know, and to keep you in the dark. But you know what? I’d rather keep them in the dark. Fuck them. But not to tell you is disrespectful. And I respect you. I don’t think I’ve been acting as if I do for the last few months, but I respect you.”
She was on all fours in a crouch, as if about to scratch his eyes out. “Tell me what?”
“Goldman gives you three weeks.”
She crumpled, but he would keep talking. He was tired of not talking.
“That’s closer to two and a half now. Maybe I’m wrong and you’d really rather not know, but I don’t think that’s fair to me. All these things I’m supposed to keep to myself—like the CAT scans. They’ve been terrible, Glynis. Can I get that off my chest, too? The patches are spreading. Oh, and guess how long you were expected to live to begin with? One year. One year from diagnosis, that’s the average with mesothelioma. Right, with only epithelioid cells, you might have had up to three years, on the outside, with chemo. But the moment Hartness found that biphasic crap, your life expectancy plummeted right back down to twelve months. You’ve made it almost two months past that, and we’re supposed to be grateful. But I’ve had to live with that one-year death sentence all on my own; you made it clear in Knox’s office that you didn’t want to know. So Jackson offs himself, and my first instinct is: I can’t tell my wife. Because I’m not supposed to tell you anything. But it makes me lonely. I don’t want to be alone right now. I have less than three weeks for the rest of my life not to be alone. And we have less than three weeks to do whatever it is that we’re going to do, ever, and that’s why I want to go to Pemba. Now.”
He had told her that it was not a fight. That it had never been a fight. That if there was no fight there was no losing. He had let her off the hook. She could stop fighting. Lying on her side like a trophy he had bagged—like a gnu, gut-shot but still breathing—Glynis mumbled into the sheets, “Okay, I give up.”
Yet when she lifted her head after officially giving up, she looked agreeably surprised to find herself still here, as if the only thing that had kept her from dying on the spot for months now was her determination not to. “So, fine,” she assented brightly. “Let’s go to Pemba.”
As she crawled into his arms, Shep had the astonishing impression that she meant it. He held her.
“There were a lot of things I wanted to do, too, Shepherd,” she said. “So many things I wanted to make, and now they’re stuck in my head.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He skipped the pro forma tribute to how exquisite were the few of her works that had made it into three dimensions. Time was short, and the compliments would bore her. “I don’t have the eloquence to explain why, but I know it doesn’t matter. Because maybe, if you take a step back … since you, and everyone, and everything, eventually, dies, and the whole world is all so, weirdly …”
She made a dismissive, rippling gesture with her fingers. “Fuff.”
“Yeah, it’s all fuff. So maybe—what you made, but only in your head? Is just as important, and just as real, and just as beautiful, as what you made with metal upstairs.”
She kissed him. “Thank you.”
“You know, these movies …” He was groping. “Remember how sometimes, in the middle, a movie seems to drag? I get restless, and take a leak, or go for popcorn. But sometimes, the last part, it heats up, and then right before the credits one of us starts to cry—well, then you forget about the crummy middle, don’t you? You don’t care about the fact that it started slow, or had some plot twist along the way that didn’t scan. Because it moved you, because it finally pulled together, you think, when you walk out, that it was a good movie, and you’re glad you went. See, Gnu?” he promised. “We can still end well.”
By the time he slipped from the bedroom they were actually laughing, although whether Glynis’s renewed sense of humor was rooted in a release from denial or its immediate restoration was hard to say.
Before heading downstairs to mobilize breakfast for seven, he rapped on Zach’s door. The leery visage that peered from the crack betokened a fervent hope that whatever mind-altering drug had infused his father’s bloodstream had now worn off.
“Your mother’s game. So what’s it gonna be?” said Shep. “In or out?”
“It’s only been an hour!”
“So? I have to buy the tickets after breakfast.”
“This is completely nuts. But … I can’t stand that vegetarian slop Aunt Beryl makes. I don’t feel like asking Jesus into my heart, and Grandma is always hugging my face into her boobs, which is totally embarrassing. And I don’t … Well, I don’t want to leave Mom. So I guess I don’t have any choice. But you’re right, if I told your bizzaro plan to a social worker, I bet you’d be arrested.”
“That’s why we have to move quick,” said Shep ligh
tly. “We’re absconding.” Absconding was just the sort of word that Jackson had loved. Indeed, he’d delivered to Carol a similar sense of liberation when she’d confessed miserably that under the circumstances she dreaded organizing a funeral, and he’d pointed out that you didn’t have to have one.
“So don’t you have to contact my school and shit?” said Zach. “Get permission?”
“Probably,” said Shep. “But I won’t.”
“Well, you can’t just leave.”
“Mooches do.” Shep’s beatifically off-kilter smile discouraged further inquiry.
Zach gestured downstairs, where Heather was throwing another fit about the crumb cake. “And what about those guys? Like, what are you planning to do, leave them behind in this house? ‘Cause I don’t get the impression they’re heading back to Windsor Terrace anytime soon.”
His son had been the only recipient of the news about Jackson who hadn’t acted shocked. Perhaps understandably, the hikikomori the boy ran with considered suicide a perfectly reasonable alternative to a life of indefinite self-imprisonment in a small bedroom. Zach’s casual revelation that he and his friends talked about “checking out” as commonly as teenagers in his father’s day had withdrawn books from the library had further motivated Shep to haul the kid out of the country.
“I guess I haven’t addressed that yet,” Shep admitted. True, abandoning the furniture was an active pleasure. The landlords would be stuck with its disposal, but Shep was discovering that the process by which he had all his life assumed the burdens of other people could be accomplished in reverse. Abandoning the Burdinas was another matter.
Having learned the secret that decisions take no time, Shep had resolved the issue between his first step at the top of the stairs and his arrival on the ground floor.
Heather was running water at the sink purely to make the kinetic fountain work, and her poking at the twirling whisk was getting the floor wet. (Since she’d got here, the girl hadn’t acted mournful but manic. Hyperactivity and nonstop food tantrums were the sole indicators that she had registered that she no longer had a daddy. Shep wondered if there was such a thing as antidepressants working a bit too well.) Right now Heather was tunelessly belting out the theme song of Pogatchnik’s television ad, “The handyman can, oh, the handyman can!” turning the faucet on and off in time with the monotonous song. It was annoying—worse than annoying really, it was excruciating—but he didn’t have the heart to tell her to cut it out any more than he’d be able to deny her yet another slice of crumb cake.