Part 30 (1/2)

”Do you still have your job?” I asked.

”No. No, they laid me off a few weeks ago, after I was in the hospital with pneumonia.”

”And your friends?”

”A few of them have died in the last year. They just went like that that , three people in, like, six months. The guy I've always thought of as my best friend is sicker than I am, he's in the hospital. He doesn't recognize people unless he's having a very very good day.” , three people in, like, six months. The guy I've always thought of as my best friend is sicker than I am, he's in the hospital. He doesn't recognize people unless he's having a very very good day.”

”Are you scared?” I said.

”What do you think?”

”Yeah. Well, I would be, too.”

He sighed. ”And then sometimes I'm not,” he said. ”It sort of comes and goes. But every minute is different now. Even when I'm not afraid, things are different. I feel-oh, I can't explain it. Just different. I used to lose track of myself, you know. Like I didn't have a body, like I was just, I don't know, like I was was the street I was walking on. Now I never lose track of myself.” the street I was walking on. Now I never lose track of myself.”

”Uh-huh.”

”And, you know,” he said. ”If I ever really thought about it, I pictured myself as being old and having no regrets. You know? I pictured something like a famous old man in bed with people around him, and him saying 'I have no regrets.' That's really pretty silly, isn't it? It's really very silly.”

”What do you regret, exactly?” I asked.

”Oh, well. Nothing really, I guess. I mean, I did think I'd do more with my life than this. I just thought I had more time. And like I said, I thought I'd be famous and retire to a place like this.”

”Uh-huh. Well, this wouldn't be for everybody,” I said. ”There's only one movie theater. And no place to hear good music.”

He laughed, a low sound with a rasp to it, like sc.r.a.ping a potato. You could hear his illness in his laugh. ”I never really did those things in New York,” he said. ”I just, well, I guess you'd have to say I've been gambling with my life. I guess you'd have to call it that. I was thinking things would somehow work out. I thought I just needed to work hard and have faith.”

I walked over to the bed. I stood beside him, as the mouse went about its scratching inside the wall. ”Um, hey, how about if I get in bed with you for a while?” I said.

”What?”

”It doesn't seem right for you to be alone here,” I said. ”How about if I just got in under the covers with you for a little while?”

”I don't have any clothes on,” he said.

”That's okay.”

”What's the matter with you?” he said. ”You want to sleep with me because I'm sick?”

”No,” I said.

”Would you have wanted to if I wasn't sick?”

”I don't know.”

”Oh, for G.o.d's sake. Will you get out of here, please? Will you just get out of here?”

”Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, like, offend you.”

”I know you didn't. But go. Please.”

”Well. Okay,” I said.

I left the room, and closed the door behind me. I felt a weight in my arms and legs, a stodgy sense of disappointment and nameless, floating embarra.s.sment. I hadn't wanted to intrude on his privacy. I'd only wanted to hold him for a while, to guide his head to my chest. I'd only wanted to hold on to him as his body went through the long work of giving itself up to the past.

JONATHAN.

E RICH RICH came back the next weekend. I'm not sure why the invitation was issued or why it was accepted-none of us, Erich included, had seemed to have an especially good time. All day Sunday he'd been sulky and withdrawn. Still, when we took him to the train station Bobby asked, ”Do you want to come back next weekend?” Erich hesitated, and then said all right. He said it in a flat, determined voice, as if laying claim to that which was rightfully his. came back the next weekend. I'm not sure why the invitation was issued or why it was accepted-none of us, Erich included, had seemed to have an especially good time. All day Sunday he'd been sulky and withdrawn. Still, when we took him to the train station Bobby asked, ”Do you want to come back next weekend?” Erich hesitated, and then said all right. He said it in a flat, determined voice, as if laying claim to that which was rightfully his.

As Bobby and I were driving home I asked, ”Do you really want to have Erich back again so soon?”

”Jon,” he said, ”that guy needs some time in the country. Really, did you look look at him?” at him?”

For a moment it seemed Bobby did not yet understand the nature of Erich's illness; he seemed to believe Erich was only stressed and overtired, in need of a good long rest. ”He needs more than that, Bobby,” I said.

”Well, a little time in the country is about all we can give him. He's, like, a member of the family now. Whether we like it or not.”

”The family,” I said. ”You know, you're going to drive me crazy with this s.h.i.+t.”

He shrugged, and smiled ruefully, as if I was being petulant about a condition that clearly lay beyond anyone's control. Erich was attached to us now, however tenuously, and in Bobby's private economy we were obliged to offer everything we had.

Erich returned the following Friday on the five o'clock train. By then he'd regained his polite, slightly squeaky enthusiasm, though now it was more p.r.o.ne to lapses. Bobby took the main responsibility for seeing to Erich's comfort, and by the end of the second visit the two of them had embarked on a kind of courts.h.i.+p. Bobby was doggedly affectionate, and Erich accepted his ministrations with a wan and slightly irritable greed, like an indignant ghost come back to exact reparations from the living.

Late Sunday afternoon I was in the kitchen with Clare and Rebecca. Clare sliced an avocado. Rebecca sat on the counter top, sorting through a set of plastic animal-shaped cookie cutters, and I stood alongside, to keep her from falling. Outside the window we could see Bobby and Erich sitting in the unruly gra.s.s, talking earnestly. Bobby made sweeping motions with his hands, indicating enormity, and Erich nodded without much conviction.

”So, Bobby has a new love,” I said.

”Don't be nasty, dear,” Clare said. ”It isn't becoming in you.” She laid avocado slices on a plate, began peeling a Bermuda onion.

”I just don't feel like Erich needs to suddenly become our favorite charity,” I said. ”He's practically a stranger.”

”We have room here for a stranger, don't you think? It's not like we lack for anything ourselves.”

”So now you're Mother Teresa?” I said. ”This seems a little sudden.”

She looked at me with an even-tempered calm that was more cogently accusing than any censure could have been. Something had happened to Clare. I couldn't read her anymore-she'd given up her cynicism and taken on an opaque motherliness. We were still friends and domestic partners but we were no longer intimate.

”I know,” I said. ”I'm just a rotten person.”

She patted my shoulder. ”Please don't pat pat me,” I said. ”You never used to pat me like this.” me,” I said. ”You never used to pat me like this.”

Rebecca, who had been droolingly contemplating a cookie cutter shaped like a moose, started to cry. Discord cut into her skin like a fine cord; she wept whenever anyone in her vicinity spoke in anger.

”Hey, kid,” I said. ”It's okay, never mind about us.”

I tried to take her in my arms but she didn't want to be held by me. She insisted on being picked up by Clare, who walked with her into the living room while I finished slicing the onion.

Eventually, Erich took up residence. He had nowhere else to go except his spa.r.s.e, comfortless apartment in the East Twenties. He'd have endured his illness in the company of volunteers until he moved to whatever hospital beds were available to the unprosperous and the uninsured. Bobby insisted that he visit us often, and when the trip got to be too much for him he moved in for good. I offered my bedroom, claiming I'd learned to prefer sleeping downstairs. Taking Erich in was not a simple process. I resented him for being sick and at the same time felt compelled to treat him in ways I hoped to be treated if I fell ill myself. I practiced the tenderness I hoped I might inspire in others if my vigor leaked away and my body started to change. Sometimes I caught up with the feeling and experienced it, a flush and flutter of true concern. Sometimes I only manifested it. After a period of resistance Erich agreed to take over my bed, and in doing so almost palpably relinquished a degree of partic.i.p.ation in the ongoing, living world. This moment may come to us all, at some point in our eventual move from health into sickness. We abandon our old obligation to consider the needs of others, and give ourselves up to their care. There is a s.h.i.+ft in status. We become citizens of a new realm, and although we retain the best and worst of our former selves we are no longer bodily in command of our fates. Erich needed my room for the complex business of his dying. He was a private person and would not suffer well in the midst of our domestic traffic. So with a courteous and slightly aggrieved smile he allowed me to put him into my bed. I turned thirty-two the day after he arrived for the final time.