I Have of Late Lost All My Mirth
by D.E. Fredd
I hadn’t seen my brother Randy in eight years. It might as well have been twenty because I barely recognized him. He was dying, a shrunken caricature of his former athletic self, a hundred pounds at best, hunched in a wheelchair on the rickety front porch of a small hovel five miles east of godforsaken Reardon, Washington.
Two days before I had received his e-mail message asking that I come out and see him. It was vital. I’d understand when I got there. It took me twelve hours to fly from Burlington, Vermont to Seattle via Pittsburgh, Chicago and Denver, another half day to catch a few hours sleep then drive the three hundred miles to Spokane and try to locate the virtual boondock dump he was living in.
He, at forty-seven, had inoperable liver cancer. The pain caused him to list so much to one side that he was almost parallel with the ground. His skin had a yellow, waxy look as if he were already embalmed.
“Quite a change from the last time we got together.”
Each word came out of him like he was squeezing toothpaste from a spent tube. I couldn’t recall our last face-to-face meeting, and it must have shown in my expression.
“Don’t you remember about ten years ago? We drove to Chadds Ford and looked at the N.C. Wyeth paintings. I bought a whole set of the Scribner’s Classics.”
I had never been to Chadds Ford in my life although I was familiar with Wyeth, but I nodded friendly agreement as the cabin’s screen door creaked open and out came a plain-looking Indian girl–rail thin, her long black hair pulled back and tightened so severely into a pony tail that it gave her sad eyes an oriental look. Makeup would have blunted the edges of her acne scars, but she wore none. Her loose-fitting jeans were ripped at the knees, and any figure she may have had was overwhelmed by a faded Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt that had been washed too many times.
“This is Kyrie. She’s been with me for a while.”
Kyrie and I nodded at each other. She lovingly re-draped the blanket over his shoulders, which he annoyingly shrugged off.
“If you want to be useful, go get him a Coke so we can sit and catch up on old times.”
***
Randy is my older brother by twelve years. I was in first grade when he graduated from high school with nearly every academic and athletic honor to be had in Vermont. In fifth grade I attended his graduation from Swarthmore and was a junior in high school when he officially became a doctor. He married well, as the phrase goes. Julie was from Philadelphia’s Main Line, and Randy, with the aid of his in-laws, bought into a lucrative practice, quickly becoming a very wealthy anesthesiologist. Of course there were the requisite charity functions, vintage sports cars and country club memberships that came with such success. I had visited his Bryn Mawr estate a few times when I was an undergraduate at Drexel. Most of the time was spent showing me all the things he had acquired, including a gardener, cook and wine cellar. He and Julie seemed the happy couple, and I secretly admit to lusting after her as she bustled about their home in her skin tight riding clothes, holding up swatches of fabric, asking for opinions but really never pausing long enough to listen before she was on to another topic. I remember a serious luncheon conversation which consisted of someone in their circle of friends who had the audacity to serve cut rate Chilean wine at recent soiree.
But half a dozen years later, things changed rather dramatically just before he turned forty. I was off for the summer from my teaching job at Northern Vermont Community College, and he invited me to come down for a weekend as Julie was off shopping in Paris with her mother. We jogged several miles early on Saturday morning, availed ourselves of his sauna, then went to the ball park and stuffed ourselves silly on hotdogs, pretzels and beer as we witnessed the Phillies lose a close one to the Cardinals. On the drive home he said, “This has been the best day I’ve had in a long time.”
“I had a great time too.”
“I felt very ‘real’ today, relaxed, no pressure, just hanging out eating junk food, watching a ball game, not having to put up a phony façade.”
I really had no idea what he was referring to with regard to “pressure” and “façade”, but, when I left for Vermont a day later, he gave me a hug and declared that I was the least pretentious person he knew.
***
A few months later my parents got a call. Randy had left Julie for parts unknown. I gather there was an explanatory letter which Julie was not willing to share with our side of the family other than the news that Randy had left her everything: house, cars, investments—everything but a few clothes he took with him and some cash. Over time and bit by bit information came in. The theory went that the tuxedoed charity events, dinner with power couples and keeping up with the haute monde to say nothing of a wife whose primary objective in life was shopping for the right outfit, all this was not something a farm boy from Woodstock, Vermont wanted out of life. My mother pontificated that children would have saved the match.
A private detective was hired but there was no trace of him, credit card or otherwise. A few months later I got a note with a St. Louis address requesting any important info relating to mom and dad be relayed. He begged me for secrecy. I dropped him a return letter, affirming my pledge. St. Louis may have been a test because my letter came back “addressee unknown.” A few years later he sent me a Spokane address with the update that he was volunteering his medical services to the Indian population and was living on a cot in the rear of one of his storefront clinics. He declared he’d never been happier, freer, and only sorry that in his selfishness he had to disappoint so many people.
I began a series of letters, chatty things of no real import, enclosing a few photos of mom and dad and whatever girl I was going with at the time, never mentioning his flight from Julie and the affluent world he left behind. Aside from his work with the street people, when he did reply, he offered no personal information until the evening I got his e-mail to come out to Washington State.
***
It was nearing dusk. I had gulped one soda, and Kyrie had immediately gotten another. Randy sipped a burnt orange liquid from a large plastic bottle. He knew he had very little time left. No, he didn’t want part of my liver. The cancer had gone too far and some past drinking habits had done a number on the organ before tumors had set in. Of all the diseases he hated cancer the most. It was mindless and rapacious. It could not understand that, as it ravaged its host, it was killing the very being that was sustaining its life. Why did it have to eat at such a fast pace? Why couldn’t it compromise, settle down like any self- respecting parasite and live in harmony like those birds that sit on a rhinoceros’s back or the lamprey eel.
Pain management was his top priority these days; finding the right mix to dull the agony enough to allow his mind focus on either the past or present moments.
“Death has made me very selfish. It’s hard for me to care about others. Five years ago I met Kyrie. She was an addict, a drunk and a whore. She is like a loyal dog, probably because I took her in, didn’t judge or beat her. I can’t say I feel anything towards her except that I worry what will happen when I go. Will she go back to her old life? There is money in a safety deposit box, about eighty thousand. I’ve had papers drawn up with you as executor and power of attorney. Use it as you see fit.”
The speech exhausted him. It was as if he’d run a quarter mile at top speed. While he was speaking, Kyrie had been standing behind him. She gripped his chair, turned him around and deftly swung him inside. The small living area had been transformed into a hospital room. A large bed with IV stands dominated the far wall. On the floor at the end of the bed was her rumpled sleeping bag. She wheeled Randy to the bed, dropped the metal side expertly with her knee and gently lifted him into it, waving off my overture of help. She got him comfortable and then plugged the IV drip into his arm. In a few minutes he sighed with relief.
Kyrie came back outside and sat on the stone step. I followed, sitting on the edge of the deck looking down at her. It was as if we were parents, had finally gotten the baby to sleep and were taking some time for ourselves in the cool night air.
“Randy wrote me several times about how much you mean to him,” I said.
“That is total bullshit.”
“Yes, it is, but I thought it might make you feel better.”
“He’s going to die tonight. That’s why you’re here. He wanted you beside him. He’ll come back to consciousness in about five hours. He likes to lie there and hear voices.”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just make up pleasant stories like you would read to a kid. I used to tell him things my grandmother told me about our tribe and its legends, but he thought they were stupid.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“We came here in May; that’s more than four months now. He wanted to die two weeks ago, but got the idea of having you come. If he isn’t able to do it on his own, I’m supposed to increase the morphine drip tomorrow. He already wrote a suicide note so we won’t go to jail. He makes me keep a chart of the good moments. We’re down to about fifteen minutes out of every twenty-four hours.”
“Does he ever talk about the past?”
“He did before the cancer. He hates the West. On a paper it says you are to cremate him and take the ashes back to Vermont, some mountain or other. He wanted to fly back last month, but he got too sick before he could get a plane.”
“You can have the safety deposit money he spoke about. It looks like you’ve put up with a lot.”
I may have offended her or maybe it was the generosity, either way she started crying. She began to say something, but the saliva just bubbled out and over her lips. She moaned, turned and reached up for me. She was drowning, grabbing onto any potential rescuer with a death grip. At first, I pulled back. I will never know whether I did that to escape her suffocating grasp, or to establish a firmer footing before beginning the arduous task of hauling her safely into my arms.
