Are You Sitting Down? (20 page)

“Did you know this girl?”
Marline asked reading the story.

“Yeah, she was in my junior class,” I said with as much grief as I could muster.

“A good student?”

“Straight A’s.
No signs of any problems.
Never slept in class.
No boyfriend trouble
that I know of
. Nothing.”

That’s what all of her teachers told the police.
They called us for a meeting one day after class.
I was thankful they didn’t want to meet with each of us individually.
I looked hard in the faces of Mr. Kindle and Coach Powers, but saw no signs of worry or fault.
Like me, they looked very concerned.
I
was
concerned for Danyele’s safety and I hoped that she was okay.
In the lounge, the other teachers had picked up the stories that were circulating among the students.
A nameless boyfriend had kidnapped her or killed her, but Danyele’s closest friends had all confirmed that she wasn’t dating anyone
that they knew of
.

Guilt was the name of the monkey on my back.
I had not had time to feel any sorrow about the affair between Danyele and me.
The possible repercussions had blinked in my head a time or two, but were shadowed by the lust in my eyes
when I was in that dark closet pushed up against her.
Then, she was gone.
It was as if some phantom lurked in the dark beside us and was on my side.
Before we were exposed, before I lost my job and went to jail, before my family was torn apart,
it
stopped all of
this
b
y
taking Danyele out of the picture.

Danyele’s picture, taunting me, soon disappeared from front page news.
For
weeks
afterwards, groups of volunteers could still be seen searching the sides of the roads, or holding bake sales in front of the grocery stores to raise money to help fund
further
investigation.
Posters with the word MISSING across them in bold letters above Danyele’s
face
hung in wi
n
dows of businesses across town for months.
On my walks, I caught myself searching the ditches along the road for clues: a scrap of cloth from her skirt, a biology book, her body.

I w
o
ke up at night having dream
t
that I did find her body beside the road while out walking.
I knelt beside her and brushed the hair from her face.
Her eyes were closed.
Her skin was cold to the touch.
In the distance, in the trees, I could hear laughing.
It was that deep boogey man laughter
from cartoons that sounded like a slowed down tape recorder.
Someone wanted me to find her.

I d
id
n’t know if it was Danyele showing me these thoughts at night or if my mind made them up out of fear of being e
x
posed.
There was no evidence that I had kidnapped or killed her, because I had not done it.
But what if?
What if someone devised a plan to frame me, and they planted clues to point t
o
ward me?
Every morning, with the family still asleep, I persistently walked the property to search for anything out of place.
I checked the house for a window that might have been left open allowing someone to plant something inside the house while we slept.
I searched my car every time it was left alone for any period of time.
I even ran to the mailbox everyday e
x
pecting to find a blackmail letter or some incriminating photographs.

Nothing ever came.

The MISSING posters faded and were replaced with yard sale announcements and
day camp advertisements
.
The yea
r
book staff dedicated the yearbook to Danyele.
The
bake sale
volunteers
soon
went home to their own families to enjoy summer vacation.
As the temperature rose, Danyele’s case went cold.
We started th
e new
school year having forgotten all about her, but I didn’t forget.
It had now been
almost
one year since what happened between us.
I stopped checking my car and stopped dreaming about finding her body
.
I stopped waiting for the day the police would knock on the door wanting to ask questions
, but in the back of my mind a part of me still couldn’t help but think someone thought they were doing me a favor.

“Hello darling,” I whispered into the phone.

It was a little joke Mom and I shared.
When I called her, I always said that when she picked up the phone.
It was from an old Conway Twitty
country western
song she listened to back when we were young.

“Hello there.
Did you just come in from your walk?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Sorry I wasn’t out there to walk with you this mor
n
ing.
I was up late last night cooking and cleaning.”

“That’s okay.
I know you have things to do to get ready for today.”

We all knew that Mom didn’t cook much these days.
Most of her Christmas spread came from the deli.
We didn’t mind though, and never said anything about it.
When taking the trash out a few years ago after dinner, I found a bag already in the trash can filled with empty plastic containers for green bean casserole, creamed corn, and mashed potatoes.
I’d known ever since then most of the holiday dinner was store bought, but Mom had slaved over that stove year after year when Dad was alive.
She deserved a break now.

Instead, I knew she’d spent last night wrapping gifts while watching old black and white holiday movies.
She’d also put out all those little trees in every room like she did when we were kids, wanting us to believe they had been there all month long.
Before go
ing
to bed
last night
, I looked out the window and saw her light
s
still on across the grove of trees
.
I could barely see the yellow light of her bed lamp glowing in the window as the heavy snow fell
.
It was a comforting feeling to talk to her on the phone now and look out the window and know that she was there at her house in the distance, even though I could not see her.

“Mom, are you in the kitchen?”
I asked.

“Yeah.
I just came in from feeding the birds.”

“Come to the window.”

“What?
Why?”

“Just come to the window, the one above the sink.”

“Okay, I’m at the window.”

I saw her shadow appear
there
.
It was still too dark ou
t
side to see her clearly.

“Can you see me?”
I asked.

“Martin, you know my eyes are bad.
What am I su
p
posed to see?”

“I’m waving to you.”

“Hello dear.
What am I doing?”

“I think you are giving me the finger,” I laughed.

“Martin White!
I am not!”

“I’m just kidding,” I laughed.

“You silly boy.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

“Merry Christmas, son.”

Justin

A monitor beeps in my left ear.
A ventilator rises and falls over my right shoulder.
Long thin plastic tubes lay against my skin, but they’ve been resting there for so long my skin is numb to their touch.
Although my eyes are closed, I imagine that I must resemble Frankenstein’s monster or some kid’s eight grade science project.
A band of
black
stitches encircle
s
half my bald scalp on the right side, starting behind my ear and ending at my temple.

I am naked beneath the cotton sheets, having made the nurse and Travis pull off my gown last night before I slept.
I doze in a slightly reclined position because I have been watc
h
ing the television mounted high above me on the wall.
The television has now been turned off because Travis thinks I want to sleep.
The room is quiet, except for the machines and the almost meditative rhythm of his breathing beside me.

I’ve been in and out of hospitals so much recently, but I always look forward to the bed.
I wish Travis and I had one like it back in our apartment.
Like a kid, I raise it up as far as it will go and
then feel like a kid cradled in its mother’s arms as I push the button to lower it completely flat again.
Travis laughs at me for playing, but I tell him I’m just testing to make sure the bed works properly.
To convince him, I push the button to call the nurse.
There’s a knock at the door and a tall thin male nurse let’s himself in.
He’s cute, blond, and shiny.
His ceil blue scrubs are crisp and clean.
Travis and I whisper like school girls behind him when he leaves.

“Forget the bed.
We need one of those buttons at home,” Travis says with a laugh.

I
sometimes
see those movable beds advertised on tel
e
vision late at night.
Some elderly woman is inclined in bed and channel surfing, or eating, or reading the paper.
Stuffing pi
l
lows between my back and the headboard of our flat
mattress
just doesn’t feel the same.
Once, I thought about calling the number flashing at the bottom of the screen and having one of those beds installed for us.
I’d wait and do it for an anniversary or something just to have an excuse.

“Your insurance will pay for a hospital bed if you want one,” Travis told me.

I shake my head no
.
He thinks I’m just being stubborn.
I am.
I don’t want to look like an invalid at home for as long as I can prevent it, but I also don’t want to sleep alone.
The only thing that makes our bed comfortable now is him sleeping in it next to me.

It is protocol for the doctors and nurses to put on a pair of rubber gloves when entering the room to examine me.
There is always an IV to change or blood to be taken.
Some of the reg
u
lar nurses don’t put on gloves to just take my temperature or blood pressure.
They know nothing I have is contagious.
The regulars are also accustomed to seeing Travis next to my be
d
side.
They greet him and call him Mr. White, and share my progress
with him. They know who he is to me.

A new nurse covering a shift
will
see Travis and then ner
v
ously check my chart
while reaching for the gloves from the box on the wall
.
Because their first impression is that we are a gay couple, they assume they will find the letters HIV on my chart.
A second glance at
the clipboard
assures them I’m clean.
A young female nurse blushed at her assumption.
Travis and I eyed her quietly, adding discomfort to her mistake.

“Diseases hold no prejudice.
Only humans,” I groggily whispered to one nurse who’d done the same.

Travis hushed me.

The nurse looked at me with a bit of shock over me reading her mind.
We didn’t see her again.

It’s been four days since I was admitted
this time
.
Travis shaved my head for me
the night before the surgery
.
I refused to allow any nurse to do it, even
a
cute one.
I’d shaved
Travis’s
face for him before out of some loving
favor I thought would be romantic.
He was hesitant about letting me do it b
e
cause I never had to shave.
The absence of body and facial hair
ha
d
made me look like some prepubescent grade school kid
all my life
.
It only gr
o
w
s
in the private places, not even under my arms.
I looked worse after the
c
hemo.
Travis joked about bu
y
ing a toupee for me, but he knew I’d settle for a ball cap.
I still felt like a pale psychic alien being from some movie.

I say psychic
because that’s exactly how I feel som
e
times.
It’s not a strange side-effect listed in all the small print Travis and I had to read, but the possibility should be explored.
With the ball cap on, and sunglasses to cover the absence of eye brows, people still look intently at me.
I try to ignore their e
x
pressions of sorrow, but I know what they are thinking.
Back home, their kids will tell the other family members about the strange bald man in the grocery store.
The parent will hush them and feel the need to explain how pitiful I looked.
Cancer may not have a cure, but it all looks the same.

That’s why no matter how much Travis beg
ged
, I refuse
d
to go out.
Forget the grocery store.
Forget a quick trip to the bank or post office, and restaurants are definitely not an option.
I’m content with my time spent behind walls at the hospital or in our apartment
,
like Quasimodo lurking in the shadows.
It seems a waste to number my days, biding my time, between these two places.
When we learned the cancer was malignant, the daily chore of being anywhere else except for in the hosp
i
tal seemed overwhelming.
Spending the rest of my time at home was much more comfortable, and between the two places, as long as Travis was with me I never got bored being there.

The chemo failed.
It seems t
he vomiting, diarrhea, na
u
sea,
loss of appetite,
and hair loss
were not the only side effects of the treatment.
The tumor originally in the
right
hemisphere of my brain barely broke down, but metastatic offshoots
from it
became secondary neoplasms on the opposite side.
I’d just b
e
gun to fully recover from the treatments.
I almost had a full head of hair back.
Then, the headaches came back.

Gamma knife radiosurgery would have been the next option had the neoplasms chosen a different organ to take re
f
uge.
A craniotomy would remove the re
mainder of the original t
u
mor, which is the reason for being in the hospital now.
Then, it’s a waiting game to see if a tumor develops at all on the o
p
posite side.
The doctors keep saying there’s a fifty percent chance it will be benign if it does develop, but isn’t there a fifty percent chance at everything?
It will either rain or it won’t.
One team always wins, one always loses.
Unless it’s a tie, but there are no ties in cancer.
I will either die of this or I won’t, but somehow I think those percentages are much different.

My parents came to town to offer their awkward and daun
t
ing support.
Mom cries and holds my hand too tight.
Dad just stands there with his hands in his pockets, eyeing his watch as if he has somewhere more important to be.
I pretended to be asleep for most of the time they were here, leaving Travis to deal with them.
He’s always had more patience with them than I ever did.
He coaxed them into a hotel for the night because he knew I’d rest better without them being here.
It’s Travis I pr
e
fer to stay with me anyway; and he has
been here
, never leaving my side through all of this.

“Are you tired?”
I asked him.

“No, I’m fine, Justin.
I napped a little
while you were asleep.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean then, Sweetie?”

“Are you tired of dealing with all of this?
With me?”

He was silent for a bit, thinking about what I had asked him and how he was going to answer.
I looked at him for a long time, wondering if he was going to answer
at all
. Maybe he was pretending I was just a little child asking an embarras
s
ing question
when
the grown ups in the room
all
act like nothing happened.
Then he spoke.

“I think both of us are tired of it. If there’s any place I’d r
a
ther be right now, I’d want you to be right there with me.
I’d want you to be healthy.”