1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
Myrna
Part 5
Just a couple of weeks after they told me and Sarah what was going on, we got a
call that Dad had taken Justin to the hospital the night before because some
new medication made him sick. A lot of excuses about having to work during the
last year had been because Justin would have these adverse reactions to
medications and stuff. We hadn't seen him for awhile when we got the call, and
the first time Sarah and I saw him in the hospital, he looked awful. He was so
thin and gray he looked like a skeleton, and Sarah kind of freaked out and
started crying and that made Justin feel like total shit and then Sarah felt
like total shit. Mom and Michael decided that it was all too upsetting for us
kids and that we couldn't go to the hospital to visit anymore, and that pissed
my dad off and even Ma who was like, "Christ you two, sometimes shitty
things happen, there's no keeping them safe from that!" So Mom and Michael
relented which is a good thing, because Sarah had been, like, so incensed that
she'd called Gran who started going off on everyone about family and growing up
and there was something about oppression and raising good fascists in there
too. Sometimes Gran's a little hard to follow.
I hated going to the hospital, though. Justin was doped up most of the time,
and sometimes he didn't make any sense when he talked to you and sometimes he,
like, passed out in the middle of a sentence which was creepy. I spent every
visit feeling like I was gonna hurl. And my dad would just sit there and you
could, like, talk to him for an hour, and he wouldn't say anything, not a
fucking word, it's like you were talking to him in a foreign language or
something because Justin was always acting like an interpreter. "Did you
hear that, Brian? The baseball team is ranked in USA Today?" And Dad would
grunt or say, "Mmm," and that would be it.
And always in the car on the way home, Sarah would say, "Do you promise
he's gonna be okay?" Every fucking time.
And Mom or Ma or Gran or whoever would promise that he'd be okay and that
always pissed me off. He was going to be blind, how was that remotely okay?
I felt so mad all the time. It was all so, like, random. It was just this thing
Justin was born with, but why him? It wasn't fair. It didn't make any sense,
and I know it's not like it would have been fairer or made more sense if it
happened to someone else, but it just so totally sucked.
It made everything else seem so pointless. I could forget for a little while,
but then I'd be messing around with my friends or watching TV or playing summer
ball, and I'd feel so guilty. And it's not like there was anything I could do
about it, but it felt wrong to be having fun and laughing and enjoying shit
when something so awful was happening.
If it had been me, I would have been so angry all the time, but Justin seemed
pretty much the same as ever. It's not like he was all, "Hooray! I'm going
blind!" but he just seemed...normal. You'd've thought every second of every
day, he'd just be consumed by the whole thing, like, he'd want to shake people
and yell at them, "You think I care about your shit?" But he wasn't
like that.
Whenever I was at the loft, he was working in his office or making dinner or
whatever. He laughed at stuff when we watched TV or movies, he made phone calls
about junk I never understood-moving mutual funds and buying stocks and
splitting dividends.
My dad, though, was, like, totally checked out. It's not like he was foul
tempered or anything; he wasn't tempered at all, which was majorly out of
character. My dad is nothing if not a million tons of attitude, but he was just
gone. He was this lump of fucking "whatever." He never had an opinion
about anything-dinner, the movie we picked, the restaurant we were going to,
the shirt I was wearing.
God, he didn't care about anything. I figured he'd be so pissed and fired up
about what was happening to Justin, and it was like he didn't even give a shit,
like it was just one more thing.
I wanted to scream at him to feel something and even if he didn't feel anything
to at least fucking act like he did, but I'd told Justin I'd lay off, so I did.
I tried to hang around the loft more just because...well, God, like, because
maybe Justin needed to know that someone fucking gave a shit.
Sarah and I always hung out at the loft a lot during the summer anyway. One
whole wall on the lower level had these removable glass doors, so the pool was
accessible through this awesome deck area. Dad and Justin were always really
cool about leaving us alone down there when our friends were over. It's not
like there was anything to worry about really--Emmett was almost always there.
He usually didn't work after July 4th up until some time in September. He said
anyone gauche enough to throw a party or get married in August in Pittsburgh
didn't deserve his fabulous expertise. He'd hang with us and make up these
ridiculous stories about stuff he and Michael and my dad did when they were
young.
Even so, I know I was there a lot more than usual. I had this kind of weird
feeling like maybe I could sort of hold everything together, like, stave off
the inevitable or something.
Maybe it all would have eased up after awhile, if we'd had a chance to get used
to the idea. We were supposed to have that chance. Losing the rest of his sight
was supposed to be a gradual thing. When they finally started telling people
what was going on, Justin was already blind in his left eye. He had tunnel
vision in his left eye, and couldn't distinguish colors anymore. But with
enough light, he could function okay. When I told some of my friends, people
who didn't see him all the time, they were totally floored because they
couldn't tell anything was wrong.
School started again in September, and I couldn't hang out as much as I had
during the summer, but I still found a lot of reasons to drop by on the
weekends. I started running with my dad-I really did want to start conditioning
for baseball-and he always ran me hard. I'd usually stick around for dinner, maybe
invite some friends over to watch a movie, whatever.
One weekend, I didn't even have to think up a reason to stay over because Mom
and Ma and Sarah were visiting Mom's sister in Chicago. I begged off with an
excuse about baseball conditioning, but really I just didn't want to be stuck
with my cousins Ronny and Peter for a whole two days. They are such tools!
So Saturday before dinner I managed to talk my dad into running with me. Justin
had been working most of the day in his study, but he promised to order out
some Chinese for us while we were running.
We did fifteen miles in an hour and a half, which was close to a record for me.
I was hooting and hollering, doing a Rocky impression as I ran ahead of Dad to
the door.
"I'm gonna do another 30 to the park and back," my dad said.
"Remind Justin no msg, and if the steamed vegetables are swimming in
butter, I'm gonna shove em up..."
"Dad! God!" I said, waving him away. I walked inside, pulling my
T-shirt over my head and heading for the fridge to get some Gatorade. I stopped
short a few feet from the kitchen doorway
Justin was sitting on the kitchen floor, his back against the dishwasher, his
knees drawn up to his chest. He was just sitting there, kind shaking.
And I knew he was blind. His eyes were totally vacant, and it scared the fuck
out of me.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Gus, go get your dad, okay?" His voice was totally calm, but there
was this undercurrent of terror somewhere.
"What's wrong?" I asked, standing there paralyzed, looking at him
like he was the guy wearing the mask in the horror film. "Did you fall?
Can't you get up?" It came out sounding like I was mad, but I don't think
I was. Not exactly. "You have to get up."
"Right now," Justin said. "Go get him right now."
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I didn't even know what in the hell I was
crying about. "But he wanted to run for another half hour!" I said,
like that mattered, like that wasn't the dumb fuckest thing to say.
"I know," Justin said apologetically. "But you have to go get
him now. Go now."
"What's wrong?" I whispered, hating myself for the wetness on my
face, and the way my voice trembled and my shoulders shook.
Justin smiled and shook his head at me, like I was upset over nothing.
"It's okay, Gussy," he said with a shrug, acting like I'd just
dribbled juice on the floor or something. "Go get your dad."
I turned and ran down the stairs and burst out of the front door, taking off
toward the park where he'd said he was going to run. "Dad!" I kept
shouting, my lungs burning in the cold night air. When I could finally see him,
I stopped running, heaved a huge gulp of air and screamed, "Daddy!"
He stopped and turned around, looking like he wasn't sure what he'd heard. I
ran over to him and said breathlessly, "You have to come home."
"What?" he scoffed, swiping at the sweat on his face, kind of
laughing at the ludicrousness of what I'd said.
"You have to come home," I said again and just stood there stupidly
while my dad stared at me. He huffed a breath of disbelief and spread his arms
wide, as if to say, 'What the fuck?'
"Something is...Justin...Justin said you have to come back."
He flinched or something. Something changed, but he stood there and looked at
me, then looked back over his shoulder like he might take off anyway. He shook
his head at me, but I just looked at him and we were stuck there and it felt
like a fucking year but it was probably a minute or two. Finally he kind of
pushed me forward, and we ran back home.
I'd left the door wide open, and Dad spared me an annoyed glance as we walked
in, but then he saw Justin, still sitting there on the floor.
"Jesus!" he said and moved toward him, muttering "Oh shit, shit,
shit, shit!"
"If you freak out in front of Gus, I swear to God, I will fucking kill
you," was the first thing Justin said to him.
It seemed a little late for that. Dad was, like, checking his arms and legs,
like he'd fallen and might have broken something, and he kept saying,
"They said months! They said it was fucking months from now! God damn fucking
shit! Fucking shit!"
I think back now and it's strange-no one-not Justin or me or my dad-ever said
Justin couldn't see anything anymore, my dad and me, we just knew what was
happening.
Justin kind of pushed my dad away from him. "If you flip out, I'm going to
flip out and Gus will be in therapy for, like, a hundred years. Call... call
Sedaris. He'll meet us at the hospital."
"Those god damned mother fucking shits!" my dad muttered. "Those
fucking fucking shits, they told us a year. Fuckers!" He started looking
around for his cell phone, which was in the pocket of his sweats.
Justin was still sitting on the floor. He was blinking really fast, and he kept
rubbing his eye. "Hey, Gus? Run change your clothes, okay? Get out of that
sweaty shit and grab some clean clothes for your dad. A pair of jeans and a
shirt. We're gonna head over to the hospital."
They ended up admitting Justin at the hospital, but the doctor assured my dad
and me that it was just for the night. They made us sit out in this hallway
while they ran some tests and got him settled.
I kept thinking maybe this wasn't really it, this wasn't the permanent thing,
just maybe a blip or something. I kept asking my dad if they couldn't fix it
for a little while, if maybe this was just, like, a reaction to more medication
or something. He never said a word. He just sat there.
"Why is it taking so long?" I groused. "Why don't you ask them
what's going on?"
"It's gonna be okay," he finally said in this dreary monotone, and he
sounded so disinterested, so, like, fucking bored, like we were all just
interfering with his plans to get his dick sucked or something, and I went off
on him.
"Fuck you, it is not!" I yelled. "You're just saying that 'cause
he told you to! It's not okay, it's fucked! And if you fucking gave a shit
about anything you'd know that!"
My dad blinked slowly and turned his head away. "Lower your voice,"
he said, like he didn't really care if I did or not.
"Why won't you fix this?" I screamed at him. "You're totally
fucking rich, you can buy whatever you want, you make people do whatever you
want! You can have anything and be anything and do anything! Why won't you fix
this?" I was grabbing his arm, and all he was doing was calmly trying to
pry my fingers off of him.
"Why don't you love him like Ma loves Mom and Michael loves Ben and every
fucking body loves everybody else! Why don't you give a fuck what happens to
him! If you loved him you'd care! You'd try to do something! Why don't you give
a shit!"
"Gus, be quiet!" came a sharp voice from behind me. I whirled around
and there was Gran, in a leopard-print jogging suit.
My dad blinked, looking at Gran like he'd never seen her before and never would
again and just waltzed out of the waiting area. I watched him go, my mouth
gaping wide open in total disbelief.
Gran marched over to me. "Sit!" she said pointing one of the chairs.
"Gran!" I whined.
"Sit!" she said menacingly. "Now you listen to me. Your daddy
would claw his own eyes out and give them to Justin if he could. His heart is
breaking over this. Breaking! I don't ever want to hear you say he doesn't
care. I won't have that, Gus."
"But Gran, he doesn't even..."
"Honey, maybe Brian doesn't piss and moan the way the rest of us do, but
you know better than to judge a book by its cover."
"He just sits there! He doesn't act like it even matters! He won't do
anything to..."
"Sometimes...some...people...the choice is between flying apart at the
seams or staying really, really still. There's no middle ground. I think...Gus,
I think stillness is the only way your dad can handle this right now."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.
"You don't remember your Uncle Vic, Honey, my brother, my best friend in
the whole fuckin' world. When he was dying, some days all I could do was just
inhale and exhale. That was all I could do. Anything more was too much. Any
sound, any sight, any thought was just... overwhelming to me. Stillness. That's
how I coped. Some days. Other days I found that yellin' and screamin' my
fuckin' head off at the unfairness of it all helped a lot too." She kind
of laughed and shrugged and watched my face to see me understand.
"Sometimes I wish...I wish my dad was just a regular person," I said,
wiping my nose on my sleeve. "I wish we just had some dumb regular life
and nothing special and nothing awful ever happened."
"Oh, I know, baby. I know," Gran said, hugging me tightly, and for
once I didn't even squirm or try to get away.
Finally I said, "Gran, is Dad coming back?"
"He's with Justin, baby."
"No, he walked out," I reminded her.
"Honey, he's with Justin. I know."
"I wanna...I wanna go say goodnight, okay?"
Gran smiled that totally annoying knowing smile of hers, and I rolled my eyes
at her and left her laughing in the hallway.
A nurse gave me Justin's room number, and I felt kind of scared or something,
which was totally dumb, but I wasn't sure how to be with him exactly.
I stopped at the open door and sure enough my dad was there with him.
Justin was sitting up in bed, not looking sick or anything, just...blind. He
wasn't there in his eyes anymore, and that was so odd because he'd been there
just hours earlier when Dad and I left on our run, and now he was gone.
My dad was sitting next to the bed, the chair pulled in really close. His
elbows were resting on the bed and the way he was looking at Justin just...it
floored me. I'd never seen him look like that, so...open. And here's what's
totally strange-I knew, I fucking knew like I know my name that every other
time in the whole world that I'd seen my dad had been a mask, but this one
time, this one, single time was the real man underneath it all.
And then I wondered if Justin had ever seen that or if it was only now that he
couldn't see it that my dad was showing it. I hoped Justin had seen it. I
really, really wanted him to have seen that.
My dad was rubbing Justin's cheek with his thumb. "I was going to be
beautiful for you one more time," my dad said, in this gentle voice I
would have never recognized as his.
Justin smiled, then kind of chuckled. "At your age?" he asked with
exaggerated disbelief.
My dad laughed, which surprised me because he gets pissed if you make fun of
how old he is. God, you don't even have to make fun, you just have to mention
it. "I was going to wear that black Armani sweater we got in Italy with
the pleated black pants I had made and the Iberi shoes. Juan would have just
cut and styled my hair. Anna over at Uwharrie's would have shaved me and given
me a facial. Then..."
Justin laughed and shook his head. "That is so you, Brian Kinney."
"What?"
"Trying to control the last image I have of you. Well it would have been
for nothing, because when I think of the way you look it's going to be with an
insane case of bed head with your cowlick at its absolute worst, two days of
stubble, and wearing those ridiculous boxers Sarah and Gus gave you for
Christmas back in the dark ages."
"I never had bed head," my dad said, with absolute conviction.
"Oh God, begin the revisionist history now," Justin said. "Hey,
at least the lights went out before you went gray, right? I'll only ever know
you with a full head of brown hair..."
"No," my dad whispered, shaking his head, then rubbing his face
against the hollow of Justin's neck and shoulder. "I can't," he said.
"Not yet, not yet, I can't."
Justin reached up and pet my dad's hair and sighed. "Okay," he
whispered. "We'll wait a little bit, then."
My dad sighed and said, "Do you know how badly this whole bravery in the
face of total fucking shit makes me want to puke?"
"Really badly, I'm guessing."
"Really."
Justin shook his head at my dad. "You're so full of shit. You've fried so
many brain cells, you can't remember dick."
"I can remember dick." He sounded insulted.
"I did all that self-pity, why-me shit, like two years ago. And my God, I
was the one who didn't get out of bed for two weeks when I lost color. Remember
him?"
"Actually, I kind of liked him," my dad said. "I did not have to
go to any effort to get him to put out."
"That must have been a real relief to you. What with all that effort you
usually have to go to."
"It's nice to kick back every now and then."
"Then why were you so mean to him long about day 12?"
"Long about Day 12, he started to get on my nerves as I recall."
"Mmm," Justin said, with a tragic sigh. "Then it was back to
working hard for a piece of tail."
"Luckily my work ethic is so strong."
"Yeah, that is lucky." Justin sighed and tugged my dad's arm so he
had to get up and sit on the edge of the bed. "I was going to be
ready," he said. "Take those stupid fucking classes and be ready to
deal, but I'm so fuckin' not. I practically broke my neck trying to get from
the bathroom to the kitchen and that's where I fuckin' live! How am I gonna do
this?"
"Come on, you were in shock for fuck's sake. You're okay at home." I
couldn't see my dad's face anymore, but I could hear the grin in his voice.
"We've practiced that enough, don't you think?"
Justin smiled. "Yeah, well, I'm not worried about getting around in the
bedroom."
"Or the shower," my dad added. "Or the sauna or the media room
or your office or the library..."
"Minor present! Minor present!" I called from the doorway. Hey,
there's only so much I can learn about my parents in a given day.
"Hey, Gus," Justin said. "You okay? Sorry for the drama."
I swallowed around the lump in my throat and nodded, and my dad...oh God, the
look on his face was so...just sad. And then he kind of nudged my arm and
nodded at Justin, and I realized I couldn't just nod and I said, "Yeah,
I'm okay," and my voice sounded shaky and not okay at all. "Gran's
here. I'm gonna go back home with her. I just wanted to make sure you
were..." I couldn't say the word 'okay,' I wouldn't because it wasn't
okay. "You know," I finished with a shrug.
Justin nodded. "I'll be home in the morning. Come over for pizza Friday,
okay? No more puky meds for me, so I'm loading up-sausage, pepperoni,
hamburger, extra cheese, the works."
"Yeah?" I said. "I'll bring some saltines for Dad." I
looked hesitantly at my dad, and kind of shrugged an apology at him.
He looked at me for a minute, then at Justin, then he looked back at me with an
identical shrug. We kind of smiled a little at each other.
"Actually, I think your dad's on kelp and melba toast this week,"
Justin said.
"Or is it seaweed and croutons?" I asked. "How do you keep it
straight anyway?"
Dad answered right on cue. "Yeah, loving the Abbott and Costello thing,
but Sonny Boy has to go bye-bye now. Bye bye Sonnyboy."
"Touchy touchy," I said. I crept a little closer to the bed and
reached for Justin's arm. "Um, okay, so...pizza on Friday, right?"
"Right," Justin said. He pulled me down into a hug. "You were
really awesome tonight, Gus. You were calm and you did what I needed you to do.
You're a pretty amazing kid."
I rolled my eyes and kind of shoved myself away from him. "Shut up,"
I mumbled, and he laughed a little.
Then I hugged my dad kind of awkwardly, feeling self-conscious and awful about
yelling at him, but he hugged me back really hard, like so fucking hard. His
hand was on the back of my head and he just held me there for a long time. He
didn't pat me on the back or ruffle my hair or even rock back and forth on his
heels. We just held tight to each other and stood there, for a good long time,
really still.