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They’re all here, family members I haven’t seen in decades, all from Stefanie’s side. Her uncle Tito, Ramona’s perpetually unemployed younger brother, must have driven in from Connecticut. The last I heard about him was that he was living comfortably off a widow whose deceased husband’s assets left her well taken care of. Claudia la puta, Stefanie’s slutty cousin, is also here. Having fought over boys back in high school, they became close as adults, laughing about those days at family gatherings. She’s about Stefanie’s age, in her late sixties now, still wearing too much makeup and still assaulting my nostrils with her perfume.
She’s crying hard.
This is goodbye.
Stefanie’s room at ICU is more crowded than a bus terminal at rush hour. Jessie is at the doorway being comforted by Rippey, who’s stroking her hair as she cries on his shoulder. He’s doing his best to avoid weeping openly but it’s not working, he’s matching her tear for tear. What he is succeeding at is fulfilling his role as the comforting father—the role that should have been mine. If happiness, stability, and normalcy were all that I could wish my family after I had left them, Rippey was more than up to the task. For that reason, alone, I probably shouldn’t hate him. But I do. And it’s for the same reason.
Artie and Ramona are holding each other, suffering the unbearable sight of their motionless daughter being kept alive by some electronic contraption whose incessant rhythmic beeping is echoing throughout the room. Next to his abuelita is Davey, covering his face with his hands, crying louder than I’ve ever seen him, even as a child. Abuelita Ramona rubs his back softly. She has always been overprotective of Davey, having been a big part of his recovery when he fought off his demon of alcohol abuse.
When Dominic barreled into the room minutes ago, he unleashed a loud, gut-twisting bawl upon seeing his little sister breathing weakly with the aid of a ventilator. He didn’t even notice that his daughters Aida and Penny were in the corner of the room, holding each other in tears. They’ve grown into two lovely young women who took on the best of Patti’s features. Neither of them gets to see their father much these days. Aida’s married to a car dealer in Philadelphia, and Penny’s raising a family with her mortgage-broker husband upstate. But both are here to be with the family at this terrible hour. They always deeply loved their Aunt Steffy, and their hearts are shattered just like everyone else in the room.
The intangible curtain that shields me holds on as I stand at the foot of Stefanie’s death bed, but barely. My incommodious tenants Los Ruidos are doing everything they can to break and expose me.
The only woman that has ever lived in this heart for the thirty-eight years that it functioned will never rise again. She has fallen victim to a predator of another kind, a cancer that has taken over her brain. There is nothing else the doctors can do. For the last two and a half plus decades, Stefanie’s last mental vision of her first husband was him spending his last living moments dishonoring her. To try and disprove that I would have had to expose her, and everyone else, to the horrors that make my current existence possible.
Stefanie was the one that saved my life, plain and simple. She was the answer to the prayers I made as a child, kneeling beside my mother at Church. On those Sundays, I prayed that the day would come when Mami would love me again the way she once did. Knowing that those chances were slim, I also prayed that if she didn’t, someone else would. And now the woman that did bring that love back into my life, is lying before me, taking her last artificial breaths, thinking that seventeen years of her life were wasted on an unfaithful scumbag. But why flatter myself? She probably hasn’t thought of me for years. She’s been married to Rippey longer than she was to me. He saved her life the way she saved mine.
The song of Los Ruidos gets fierce and merciless, making the sobbing around me barely audible.
A woman’s gasp breaks through—it might have been Ramona. The room turns silent. Everyone focuses on the bed. Was it a moan? Dominic brings himself closer to Stefanie. His head jolts back! This time several of the women in the room gasp. It was very slight but everyone saw it, a barely discernible twitch below Stefanie’s left eye.
Her head makes a slight move to the left.
“Oh my God!” cries Jessie, choking in her tears. “Mommy?”
The relatives and friends outside the room, not having seen what happened, begin to buzz with curiosity. They’re shushed by someone inside the room.
Stefanie’s breathing turns erratic, as if she’s fighting the ventilator that’s keeping her alive. Her head moves more noticeably, jerking to the left and to the right.
“Get a nurse,” calls Rippey to no one in particular.
Davey sobs helplessly in his grandmother’s arms. The family members close in around the foot of the bed. I am still out of sight but any second now someone is going to feel the space my body is taking up.
Her movements stop. The beats of the life support system turn radically inconsistent. Family members clear a path for a nurse, entering the room.
There is rapid eye movement underneath Stefanie’s eyelids.
The beeps grow farther apart.
A doctor comes in and places his stethoscope over Stefanie’s heart.
The beats grow faint. She’s fading.
Dominic is sweating so much his clothes look like he just came in from the rain. “Do something!”
Another moan from Stefanie. It brings the room to a stop.
Rippey’s tears drip on to her pillow. “Honey, I’m right here,” he whispers. “I’m right beside you.”
“Sis?” Dominic is near convulsions. I’ve never seen him like this.
Stefanie’s eyeballs continue to wander aimlessly under her fluttering lids. Is she trying to open her eyes? How is this possible? How can she—?
They’re open! Her eyes are open! And she’s looking straight ahead...
...fixated in horror...
...at me!
She closes her eyes, turning away from the frightful sight. Her hands shake. Rippey takes the one closest to him and holds it against his face.
This is much too painful for a woman of Ramona’s age to have to see. “¿Mi hija, que pasa?”
Artie, whose cheerful air never failed to put a smile on anyone’s face, does his best to soothe his wife, but he can use some comforting of his own.
The shaking stops. Stefanie’s hands are now still.
The beep from the monitor turns in to a long dreadful tone, droning on in the same exact pitch, the same exact sound, as the noise I’ve been hearing in my head for over fifty years.
Combined, their force is overwhelming.
I have to leave.
Now.