CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

July 9 arrived far too quickly.

Jeff and I rose around 6:30; we showered together before getting dressed. In the kitchen, where we dined on oatmeal studded with raisins and dusted with wheat germ, Mario studied his newspaper while Catherine reviewed her lesson plans for the day. No one seemed in the mood to talk, and when Jeff’s parents left for work, they only wished him well and gave him a hug before departing.

The sky was overcast, and a scent of rain hung in the air when we climbed into the Impala. Jeff slumped in the passenger seat while I maneuvered through Peru’s suburban streets and entered the highway heading south. Traffic was light. We cruised at a steady sixty-five miles per hour with the radio playing Fort Wayne’s country western station.

A car dealership’s jingle played when Jeff switched off the radio and slumped back into his seat.

“I want to talk.”

“Okay.”

“Have you ever thought about death, and what happens to our thoughts and memories after our bodies perish?”

I flexed my fingers against the steering wheel when I answered.

“After Brian died, yeah. For a while there, I actually thought I might hear from him, if there is such a thing as an afterlife. I even tried talking to him when I was alone, thinking maybe he could hear me. But nothing ever happened.”

Jeff rubbed his chin with a knuckle. “I worry if I die, there won’t be anything left of me. I’ll just disappear, and after a while people won’t even think of me anymore. If that’s the case, what’s the point of life?”

“Maybe the object is to enjoy it while you’re here.”

No apprehension arose in me when Jeff and I signed in at the chemotherapy clinic. We picked out a chaise with a nice view of the city, and soon the phlebotomist arrived with his needles and vials. When Jeff rolled up his shirt sleeve, he had so many bruises on his forearm, he looked like a dalmatian. He winced when the phlebotomist pricked him.

“We should have your lab results within a half hour,” the phlebotomist said. “Then Dr. Mashburn will decide how he wants to proceed.”

“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Jeff said. “I know the drill.”

“Think I’ll get some coffee,” I told Jeff. “Want anything?”

He shook his head and pointed at the newspaper we’d brought from Peru. “Hand me the sports section, okay?”

But five minutes later, when I returned with my coffee, the newspaper rested on his lap, and Jeff was fast asleep with his head turned to one side and his mouth gaping.

All around us, patients settled into chaises while aides and phlebotomists scurried here and there. Nurse Jennifer gave me a wave while she passed by in her gloves and goggles, wheeling a pump through the room.

I took the sports section from Jeff’s lap and studied the box score from the previous night’s Rays game with Baltimore. At this point in the season, if I were home at Fort De Soto, my dad and I would likely have attended at least a half dozen home games, and I wondered to myself if Dad had gone to a few by himself. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about baseball during our infrequent phone calls we’d shared since my arrival in Peru. In fact, he’d said very little during our talks, mostly asking questions about Jeff, or talking about events in the park.

Was he lonely living in the ranger’s residence by himself? Or had he grown accustomed to his solitary evenings? Maybe after spending all day with park guests and staff, he was grateful to be alone for a few hours.

I roused Jeff when Dr. Mashburn arrived in his lab coat with his usual entourage of medical students, and when the doctor asked Jeff how he was feeling, Jeff yawned before doffing his ball cap to display his nearly bald head.

“Just grand, doc; I couldn’t be better.”

Mashburn lowered his chin and pursed his lips. “I know this has been rough, but medically you’re doing just fine. Your platelet and white cell counts have rebounded quite well from your last cycle, so you’re good to go today.”

“All right, then,” Jeff said. “Let the poisoning proceed.”

As soon as Mashburn departed, I looked at Jeff and frowned. “I don’t think the doctor appreciates your gallows humor.”

“He’s not the one going through this shit. If he were in my shoes, I doubt he’d be laughing it up either. And those kids, his students? They need to know just how miserable this process is before they put some poor patient through it.”

The phlebotomist returned to insert Jeff’s catheter. Then Jennifer appeared, wheeling her pump with a bag of anti-nausea medication dangling from it, and while she hooked it up to Jeff’s catheter, he told her, “I don’t know why you bother giving me that stuff because it doesn’t do any good. I’d be better off puffing on a joint.”

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said, “but it’s clinic protocol.”

“Okay, but I’ll be toking in the parking garage, as soon as we’re done here.”

Time seemed to stand still while the bag’s contents dripped into Jeff’s bloodstream. At his request, I handed him his headphones and MP3 player from my backpack, then I read from The Catcher in the Rye. Back in May, I had finished half the book, but found it mildly depressing, so I set it aside and read my other two selections, Chabon’s Wonder Boys and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, finding both more satisfying. Still, I felt an obligation to finish Salinger’s novel, and now I was almost done with it.

There in the chemo clinic, I read the part where Caulfield’s in New York City, late at night. He visits the Antolinis, friends of his parents, and decides to sleep on their sofa. When he wakes up in the dark, during the wee hours, Mr. Antolini is sitting on the floor next to the sofa, petting Caulfield’s head. Caulfield gets highly agitated because he thinks Antolini has made a “perverty” pass at him. He gets dressed and leaves, all the while sweating heavily because he’s so upset.

While I studied the prose, I recalled reading the scene in high school. At the time, I didn’t consider myself gay, and back then I wondered how I would have reacted if one of my parents’ male friends had put the moves on me. Would I have sweated too?

Jennifer reappeared in her gown, goggles, and gloves, toting a bag of ABVD, and minutes later the cursed red chemical dripped its way into Jeff’s system.

When I closed my eyes, I visualized the stuff encountering Jeff’s white cells in his bloodstream and obliterating them before they even had a chance to do their job defending Jeff’s health. From what I’d read, much of the ABVD cocktail drugs had been in use by oncologists for almost fifty years. Couldn’t medical science have come up with something less devastating to Jeff’s immune and digestive systems? The stuff seemed almost barbaric.

Anger bubbled inside me because I knew what lay in store for Jeff in the days ahead, but I made a promise to myself: I would maintain a positive attitude. I would stay strong for Jeff, and do whatever was necessary to get him through this final cycle. No matter how bad things might get, I would not lose faith, because if I did, I knew Jeff would too.

It’s show time, Mazur.

*

I sat on the rim of the tub in the bathroom I shared with Jeff, watching him vomit into the toilet. Again, his face had turned that ghastly olive-green shade, and I had to fight the urge to puke myself.

After we had left the cancer center that morning, we didn’t make it halfway back to Peru before Jeff asked me to pull into a truck stop so he could drain his bowels in the men’s room. I went in there with him and stood outside the toilet stall, listening to him squirt and hoping no one would enter until Jeff was finished.

When he flushed, I asked if he was okay.

“Oh, yeah, I’m great. Just give me a minute to wipe my ass, will you?”

Now, in the bathroom at the Brucellis’, Jeff rinsed his mouth out with water from the basin tap, while I kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him. His face was slowly returning to its normal color. After he’d washed up, we went to his room and both of us undressed. Then we climbed under the covers, and I held Jeff in my arms.

“Stomach better?”

“I guess. I really hoped the weed I smoked in the garage would keep this from happening, but not this time.”

“You know the next few days will be the worst—it’s always the same after a cycle. But things will settle down. Just be strong and we’ll get through it.”

Jeff kissed my collarbone. “You’re an angel, Jakub.”

I nuzzled his bumpy scalp, and before five minutes had passed, Jeff snored. But I continued to hold him while gazing through his bedroom windows.

Outside, the sky had cleared and the sun shone. A neighbor’s kid, a little boy of seven or so, played with a border collie in his backyard, tossing a ball so the dog could retrieve it. I suspected the boy didn’t have a care in the world. What did he know of disappearing moms, or suicides, or chemotherapy’s miseries?

I tried to recall what my life had been like when I was seven, but couldn’t. My earliest memories dated to the last year my mother had lived at Fort De Soto, and even those were hazy. Was I a happy child before she vanished? I certainly wasn’t afterward. Until the day Jeff first took me into his arms, I’d sort of sleepwalked through life. But after Jeff claimed me as his lover, it seemed as if the clouds in my personal sky had parted, and a ray of sunshine had appeared, one so bright it thawed my frozen heart.

Now, those clouds threatened to return. If Jeff didn’t make it, what would become of me? I’d return to Tallahassee and resume my life there, of course. But what kind of a world would it be without Jeff? And without Brian?

Okay, Mazur, you’re thinking too much. Get moving.

I slipped from underneath the covers and tucked them around Jeff’s shoulders. Then I dressed and went to the kitchen, and while I opened a can of soup, Catherine arrived, dressed in her usual work attire—nice blouse, skirt, and leather pumps.

“I’m on lunch break,” she told me while she reached into a cupboard for a protein bar. “How did Jeff’s chemo go?”

I poured the soup into a saucepan and put it on a range burner to simmer.

“It’s been a rough morning,” I said before describing Jeff’s digestive upsets. “I got him into bed, and he’s asleep right now. He’s worn out, I think.”

Catherine toyed with the wrapper on the protein bar, flicking the edges back and forth. “I know how much it means to Jeff to have you here while he goes through this. Mario and I are grateful for all you’ve done.”

“Are you?”

Catherine lowered her gaze and nodded. “I know it may not seem that way at times, and I’ll admit I didn’t want you here at first. I thought you were a bad influence on Jeff. But now I see he was right—you’re giving him the strength he needs to fight. I’m afraid if he didn’t have you here, he’d have given up long ago.”

I stirred my soup while I spoke.

“Please know I’m in Peru because I love Jeff more than anyone else in the world, and he loves me as well. I know it may sound strange to you, how we could have those kinds of feelings for each other. But it’s real, and isn’t going away. You know that, right?”

Catherine set her protein bar aside, unopened. Then she folded her hands in her lap and looked up at me.

“I don’t understand homosexuality. As a girl, I was taught love between two men was a sin, something shameful. And that’s tough for me to unlearn, but I’m trying. You see, when Jeff was growing up, Mario and I had a vision of how Jeff’s life would unfold. We thought he’d marry and raise children. We believed he would follow the teachings of the church and lead a righteous life. We never dreamed…”

I kept stirring my soup. “Life’s funny, isn’t it? You think you have everything figured out, and you know exactly what lies ahead. Then it all blows up in your face, and you realize all your plans and expectations were just an illusion.”

Catherine nodded. “Everything’s unpredictable. I never thought I’d lose my mother so early in life. Her health declined rapidly last summer, and then she was gone, just like that.”

“Has Jeff told you about my mother?”

“Yes, and I’m so sorry. No child should have to deal with a loss like that.”

I poured my soup into a bowl and sat down across the table from Catherine.

“When Jeff told me he had cancer, I made myself a promise I wasn’t going to be a passive bystander in the situation. I decided to put my life on hold so I could help save Jeff’s, and I’m doing that as best I can.”

Catherine patted my forearm. “You’ve done amazingly well, both Mario and I see that. You’re a good person, Jakub, and if I have said or done anything to offend you, I apologize.”

“It’s okay, we’ve all been under a lot of stress, and—”

“No, it’s not okay. I was wrong, and I hope you’ll believe me when I say I’m sorry.”

I lowered my gaze and nodded.

Catherine rose and returned the unopened protein bar to the cupboard. Then she lifted her purse from the drainboard. “I need to get back to school. But before I leave, can we agree on something?”

“What’s that?”

“Why don’t you and I start out fresh? From now on, as far as I am concerned, you’re part of our family and always will be. And if you and Jeff want to show affection to each other in our home, I won’t mind and neither will Mario. You boys do as you damned well please.”