“You’ve left me with big shoes to fill.”
“Heh,” he sputters. “Listen. Your mom’s not doing so well.”
“I know. I know I’ve haven’t been so good about visiting, but I’m going to be better here on out.”
“Here on out’s not that long, is all I’m saying. Do we have an actual destination?”
“Train station, assuming you have my money.”
“I have your money. So where the hell were you, anyway?”
I bring him up to speed, or try to. The story has just reached Hooker Hill when we reach the station.
“Guess we’ll finish it another time,” he says, handing me a hundred bucks. “Maybe over a couple of drinks.”
“I’d like that.”
“I’m sorry for being such a dick.”
“You aren’t a dick. And I haven’t always been the best son, either.”
“Visit your mother,” he yells after me as I walk away.
I make it into the city in time to put in a half-day of work, and I’ve got enough money to return to the Island that evening. My father proves to be a master of understatement. My mother is barely conscious when I walk into her hospital room, doped up on serious meds that at any other time I might have coveted. She smiles when she sees me, but can’t quite muster the energy to speak. I’ve been sitting with her for an hour when I see Dr. Best pass by in the hallway. I chase him down.
“She doesn’t look that good,” I say.
“You’re going to have to remind me who you are again. …” I do. “Right!” says the doctor. “I thought we already talked about this?”
“Maybe with my father?”
“Right! So no, not good. Maybe a week or two.”
“A week or two?”
He crinkles his eyes into a face he probably learned at med school on the day they studied Dealing with Terminal Patients and Their Families.
“I wish we could have done more. I’m sure she appreciates you being here. Even when they can’t respond, like she can’t, they still appreciate it.
That’s what they say, anyway.” I realize for the first time that he’s shaking my hand.
I spend the night in her room, listening to her breathe until I fall asleep in a chair. I repeat the same ritual for the rest of the week, waking up in the chair each morning, catching the train, and filing in and out of the city like the rest of the clockpunchers. Each night I return to my bedside vigil, watching my mother slip closer and closer to the finish line.
“AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T SUFFER LONG,” says Dottie, apparently disregarding the twenty-two years my mother was married to my father, who seems as numb and detached during her funeral as he’d been during her life. Not that anyone shows much life during the solemn and humorless service.
My dad’s temperament or lack thereof matches the demeanor of my mom’s stoic relations, several of whom have flown in from the Midwest.
The obvious exception to the emotional void is Tana, an absolute wreck before, during, and after the service. When the service ends, she grabs me in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Walk with me while I smoke,” I say. By unspoken agreement my father and I have avoided lighting up in front of my mother’s family, so as not to remind them of the lung cancer that killed their nonsmoking relation.
“It’s weird,” I say upon reaching a thicket of trees that offers some privacy. “I think I always saw her as a two-dimensional character — you know, Mom.
She lived a whole life inside of her mind that I never gave her credit for. That I’ll never know. I guess it’s true what they say: We all die alone.”
“What the hell is wrong with you guys?” Tana asks.
“That depends on what you mean by ‘you guys.’”
“Men. You all say the same stupid shit. ‘The world is meaningless. We all die alone. Nothing means anything.’”
“If anything meant anything,” I say, “my mother wouldn’t have died of somebody else’s disease.”
“My point is that she didn’t die alone,” says Tana, staring at the mourners filing out of the cemetery. “Maybe we’re all out there, floating by ourselves in some big black void. But we build connections, you know? We build our own worlds with the people we love. Your mom didn’t die alone.
She had friends and she had family, and even when they let her down, she always felt like she had a home.”
Tana is bawling again. I hug her again. “I’m sorry,” I whis-per into her ear.
“Me too,” she replies. “But let’s not fucking dwell on it.”
I hold Tana tight, two lone figures surrounded by trees.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I RETURN TO THE Chelsea Hotel for what will be the last time. I skirt past Herman without his noticing me and sprint upstairs to my room. The locks have been changed.
“Deh you ah,” says Herman when I return to the lobby.
“Hi. I seem to be having some trouble with my key.”
“Ya seem ta have a little trubble widda rent as well.”
“Yeah, about that …”
“I also tawkt to a friend at the New Yawkah. Dey nevah hudda ya.” Herman grins and holds up his key ring. Except instead of leading me upstairs, he unlocks a supply closet behind him. My duffel and typewriter are inside. “Tanks fah stayin’ widdus.
Besta luck widda poetry.”
I’m lugging my stuff through the front door when Nate holds it open for me. “Weed Man!” he yells.
“Where the hell have you been?” I look at K., who’s standing next to him. She seems more interested in something on the floor. “You’re not leaving us, are you?”
“Moving out,” I say.
“Well, good luck and all that.”
K. finally speaks. “We should buy you a drink.”