Eating Heaven (27 page)

“No, I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, then.”

“I know I’m not on the best terms with my mother.”

“No,” he agrees.

“But I think it’s really important for her to see Benny, or talk to him on the phone. At least acknowledge him in some way. He’s in the hospice now. We don’t know how long he has left.”

“I see.”

“We’re going to have a barbecue here at the hospice on Wednesday evening. Do you think you could talk her into coming?”

“Oh, well, I don’t think—”

“If you could just try.”

“Well . . .”

“Great. I appreciate it so much.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know, but you’ll try. That’s all you can do, I know.”

He’s silent, then says, “You know your mother loves you girls very much.”

“I know.” I sigh. The worst part is that I do.

Yolanda is going to make potato salad. Anne’s springing for steaks, and hot dogs at Benny’s request. Christine, being a vegetarian, is making a green salad and getting her own tofu burgers to grill. As for me, here’s my list:

And, of course,

T
uesday blends in where Monday left off, Yolanda, Anne, Christine, and I coming and going from Benny’s room, watching mindless TV in the hospice living room, talking with other families, catching quick naps on the couch. There is nothing to do, and yet we can do nothing else. We are waiting for something that we don’t speak of, other than to report every snippet of news we each pick up from various sources: his nurse, Grace, Ruthann, Archie.

Benny’s vitals are continuing their slow downward spiral, Grace says, but so far, nothing drastic. We like her reports; they’re always couched in such optimistic terms. Ruthann spends a lot of time talking with Benny. I wonder if she’s become his confessor. Archie spends time with us, helping us understand the physical process of dying, the emotional process, for both the person who is leaving and those who aren’t. He’s so patient and kind that I hope he’s somebody’s father.

This morning, Christine witnessed a brief conversation Benny had with his dead mother upon waking from a nap. She asked if he could see her but he didn’t answer, just looked befuddled at her question and rubbed his arms. The morphine is taking its toll, leaving him itchy and uncomfortable.

He’s not hungry for anything and eats only a bite or two at meals. He makes a sucking noise if you hold the straw in his water glass to his mouth, but I think it’s just to fool us into lowering it. He no longer asks
questions about the outside world, his house, not even our lives. We’ve winnowed down the world to just this space, just these moments when he’s not asleep, just the holding of hands, the rubbing of shoulders, the combing of hair. Bed up or down? Room dark or light? Music or quiet, talking or silence. Everything has been reduced to only these small matters, and they take on an infinite importance.

“He wanted the Vivaldi,” Anne reports after lunch, eyebrows lifting to convey the significance.

“Grace brought him a Popsicle,” Yolanda says in the midafternoon. She’s taken leave from work. “Orange, his favorite. And he ate half.”

We are so egalitarian in how much time we each spend alone at his side and we do it without any formal agreement, just nods and body language and noticing the expressions on each other’s faces, the puffiness of eyes, the number of tissues wadded into tightly clenched hands. My sisters and I have abandoned any snide comments we might have made to each other even yesterday, put aside our lifelong squabbles and petty differences.

It’s during one of my alone moments with Benny, just as the sun is dropping lower in the sky, sending hot streams of light through the window against which I shut the blinds, that I decide to talk to him about matters more weighty.

“So, Ben,” I say, taking a seat in the easy chair we’ve positioned next to his bed. He moves his head on the pillow in my direction, but his face is in shadow, a few stripes of sunlight from the window crossing his chest.

“So,” he says, voice tired. “Ellie.”

I’ve been rehearsing the next line, which makes it no easier to say: “Is there anything left that you want to do or say that I could help you with? A letter to anyone, a phone call, or. . .” I falter, feel warmth spreading from my chest to my neck.

“Yes,” he says, voice quieter still. I wait, knowing how hard this must be. The blanket over his chest rises and falls, rises and falls, stripes of sun moving hypnotically in an optical illusion until my eyes grow heavy in the half-light. Benny snorts and I jerk awake, pinpricks of adrenaline in my scalp, and it’s then I realize that Benny has fallen back to sleep.

On Wednesday morning, I wake suddenly and panic—where is everyone? Where’s Benny?—until I realize I’m in my own bed and everyone else is safe in theirs.

When my sisters and I said good-bye to Benny last night, actually waking him at nine o’clock to let him know we were going, I felt inadequate and without the right words. I didn’t want to leave without saying something important, whatever that big thing is that must be said before it’s too late, but instead I said, “Do you need anything else before we go, Ben? Are you okay?”

Sleepily, he shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Even though he’d eaten nothing for dinner, I asked, “If you could have anything in the whole world to eat tomorrow, what would it be?”

He looked at me with watery gray eyes and shrugged. It wasn’t even really a shrug, just a small, tired movement. I wondered what he really needed, if it had something to do with my mother, and it panicked me.

“Can’t decide?” I said, absurdly jovial. “How about oatmeal cookies? With nuts, no raisins?”

He nodded slowly, a comma of a smile resting on his lips. I could have said “yak”; I could have said “snowberries.” He was just being kind.

“Okay, Uncle Benny,” Christine said, fussing with his blankets. “You get some sleep. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

Anne waved from the foot of the bed, echoing, “See you tomorrow.”

“Bye-bye,” Benny said, but still, Christine hadn’t moved. She now had the blankets balled in her hands and had started to cry.

“Bye-bye,” she said, then went to hug him. “We love you.”

Anne and I fumbled our way over to do what Christine made look so easy, to kiss our uncle good-bye. I whispered, “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

Yolanda stayed parked in the easy chair. We’d already kissed her good-bye. She made damn sure of it.

It wasn’t until I was nearly home that I remembered we were going to have a barbecue the next night, which is now tonight. I can’t imagine Benny sitting in a lawn chair anymore, can’t picture him holding a can
of Blitz, eating a hot dog, even cracking a joke. That part of him is already gone.

He is safe,
I think now as I lie in my bed, the pulse in my neck thudding the pillow. He has the best care possible. He is not in pain. Is today the day, or will I just wake up with this feeling every day until that day?

I get out of bed, feed Buddy, who seems a little despondent herself, then pull ingredients from the cupboards: flour, sugar, butter, oats, nuts. And no raisins. When the first batch is in the oven, I call my mother.

Ruthann is in Benny’s room when I arrive, standing by his bed, holding his hand. They are talking seriously, it seems, or she is, anyway. She sees the Tupperware in my hands and her eyes light up.

I hand her the container. “Oatmeal cookies,” I say. “They’re too crispy.”

“I love crispy,” she says.

“You love anything.” I pause, look at Benny. He looks different. His gaze is distracted. “Everything okay?”

“Actually, Ellie,” she says softly, evenly, and my skin prickles, “Benny’s doing great, but it’s all happening.”

I want to run. I want to sit down. I want to throw up. I want to do something other than what I am doing, which I realize now is gripping Benny’s arm as if I can hold him here forever.

“Yolanda’s been with him all night; she just went to rest for a while. He asked her for some juice at about midnight, I guess, and when she came back from the kitchen, he was no longer able to speak comprehensibly. Probably the brain mets. So we’ve stopped the dexamethasone.”

“But that means . . .” I can’t say it.

“Yeah, kiddo, you got it. It’ll be hours, maybe days. But he’s not in pain, he’s not distressed. His breathing sounds labored, but he seems comfortable. He’s just feeling a little sleepy, aren’t you, Benny?” She smiles at him, puts a hand on his forehead. “He’s not very responsive, but you should talk with him about anything you want to, or just sit with him. Touch is good. Hold his hands, rub his feet. Let him know you’re
here.” She cocks her head at me. “Okay, Ellie? It’s an amazing time in our lives, especially when the people we love are with us.”

I nod, loosening my grip on his arm so that I am merely laying my hands on him. “Will you stay, too?”

“Of course. You just tell me when you want private time.”

“I think I might,” I say. “I mean, now, before everyone else . . .”

She comes around and hugs me for the first time since I’ve met her. She is so short I have to bend down, but her embrace is as strong as her handshake.

And then I am alone with Benny. Uncle Benny. The man I have loved most in my life.

“So,” I say. “Ben.” Silence. Touching his arm, sliding down to his hand, entwining my fingers in his, feeling the wedding band on his finger. I smile at that, the bittersweet perfection of that. He squeezes my hand lightly, I think, but his eyes don’t focus on mine. They look behind me, at something I can’t see. He breathes in as if he’s coming up for air between swim strokes, deep and just slightly desperate. It’s hard to believe he’s not afraid.

“Are you really okay?” I whisper, trying to sound like I’m not crying. “Or are you just trying to impress Ruthann? It’s me, now, Ben. Ellie. You can be scared, because I sure am.”

I pause, leave a silence for him to fill. It grows unbearably long. “So, Mom called this morning, and she wanted me to tell you hi,” I lie. She wouldn’t come to the phone. “She said to tell you she’s thinking about you, Uncle Benny. She really is, even if she doesn’t act like it. I know she loves you, no matter what happened.”

His gaze doesn’t change.

“You know, we were supposed to talk about what you still wanted to do, what you still wanted to tell me. Is there something I didn’t do, or we didn’t do, that we should have? Did we wait too long?”

My nose is running too much to continue, and I have to stop and snatch tissues from his bedside table, blow my nose like a trumpet, that gaggle of honking geese. I laugh at the sound, which is ridiculous, I know, when someone is dying right in front of you, but it is funny, that
noise, and Benny’s expression shifts: a slight squint of the eyes, a curl at the lip.

“Nice, Ben,” I say. “Kick a girl when she’s down.”

And then I go to his valise in the corner, pull out the white photo album, and sit next to him on the bed.

“I thought you might like to see these,” I say, opening to the first photo of Rosemary. I hold it open in front of him. “How old was she in this picture? Five, maybe? Six?” I turn the page. “And look at you, Mr. Full Head of Hair. Nice tie.”

His breath catches for a moment, startling me, and then he coughs and seems all right again.

I turn the page slowly, and again, through the years until we are at Rosemary’s obituary. I read it aloud to him, then reach down and squeeze his hand, once hard and dry with calluses and now softening, starting to curl and turn in upon itself like an embryo. I remember what Ruthann said, and I keep squeezing, massaging, so he’ll know I’m here.

“How did you do it, all those years?” I ask, and again I’m crying. “How could you stand to watch her marry someone else, have someone else’s children? How did it not kill you?”

I wipe my eyes with my forearm. “I wish she’d stayed with you. I don’t understand her. She loves you. I know it.”

I start to close the album against my knees, and a corner of a photo slips from between two pages taped together at the back. A hiding place, and one that wasn’t there when I last looked at this book. I tug at the photo, pull it free, and a handful of dog-eared pictures tumble into my lap.

I pick them up like playing cards, square them into a pile against the photo album, front side down.

“So,” I say. “Did you want me to see these, Ben?”

His fingers move inside mine.

“Okay, then. Let’s take a look.” My heart is pounding as I flip the pile over to the top photo, a studio portrait proof of a dark-eyed young woman, circa 1970-something. She has full plum lips and an easiness in her expression. I relax. “Yolanda,” I say, marveling, as I always do, at her simple beauty.

The next is a scalloped-edge black-and-white that is old and creased—a spotted, one-eared dog sitting on porch steps. “King?” I say. “I bet it is.”

Another from the same era of a shiny, big-fendered car with huge chrome bumpers. A square color photo of Anne, Christine, and me clowning in our backyard, doing the twist, I’m pretty sure, on a hot summer night. Another old black-and-white of a serious young man in a uniform, standing stiffly beside a stern man and plump woman in good Sunday clothes. “Your brother,” I say, “and your mom and dad.”

And then I am looking into the faces of my mother, my toddler sister Anne at her feet, and myself as a baby straddling Mom’s hip. The photo is dated 1965, and we are standing next to Rosemary’s wheelchair, in front of Moreland Home. Anne is crying, and I have half of my hand in my mouth, but Mom is smiling for the camera, free hand resting on Rosemary’s head. She looks happy.