Crane (38 page)

Kari completed her chemo treatments and continued her radiation. Team Kari had done research locating homeopathics, alternative medicines, diets, sweat lodges, and just about everything but a flying swami. She was weak, her weight down to under a hundred pounds. She was hairless, suffering from pulmonary edema, and now came a new announcement from the Breast Center—the cancer was on the move again. It had traveled not back onto her scalp but into her brain.

We all wanted to keep things as positive as possible, even though standing in the corner of the oncologist’s office there was a pink-ribboned elephant that would not be denied. I was sitting there holding the hand of the most important person in the world to me, and neither of us would say, “This looks pretty bad.”

If you’re religious, faith should kick in about now. If you’re a skeptic, cynicism should take the lead. If you cry easily, sobbing was the order of the day. Kari was living in a shit storm I hoped like hell I would never encounter. I’d seen her wheeled into surgery, watched IVs of poisonous chemicals dripped into her arm, heard her wheezing lungs struggling for oxygen in the middle of the night, observed giant needles enter her back on their way to her liquid-filled lungs, listened to her being sick over and over again, smelled vomit on her clothing, carried her slim body through our house, brought her pills and glasses of water. But even with all of that, it wasn’t as though I had been through it firsthand, and I don’t think anyone can make an assessment about what it’s like to have cancer without actually having cancer. We were still a million miles apart on that front.

When we were told the cancer cells had migrated to her brain, Kari, without appearing to give up, began pulling away. She was rundown, frustrated, and disappointed. Her competitive streak was really pissed off that something might be going to defeat her. In that summer of 1993 at Century City Hospital in Los Angeles, the radiologist informed us that Kari had maxed out on radiation. There is only so much a body can absorb
without creating more damage than benefit. We were at the outer limits. Chemo was over. Radiation was over. The cancer had metastasized and further surgery was futile.

Kari’s homeopathic remedies hadn’t worked. Diet change hadn’t changed anything. Chanting, lighting candles, and a visit to a sweat lodge hadn’t altered the dismal accounting. There were no other protocols to follow, no new doctors, experts, or philosophers to consult. Sitting in the radiologist’s office, Kari and I exchanged that shorthand look that, I hope, everyone can experience with one other person during his or her lifetime. We said a million words to each other without uttering one. It was resolved. We knew.

We drove from the hospital to John and Rose Candy’s house in Brentwood. John was home alone; Rose and the kids were in Toronto. The three of us sat in the den, Kari and John sharing a couch. I watched them as I blurted out the announcement that Kari was out of moves, out of time. Kari sat quietly, embarrassed at being the center of attention.

John, gracious as ever, asked, “What can I do?”

“Nothing. Thanks. We just wanted to share the developments with you.”

We were all lost.

Next we drove to Mom and Chuck’s house in Tarzana and told them. There were tears from Mom and bravery, as always, from Chuck. “What can we do?” they asked.

More nothing, we answered.

We told Kari’s mom. Her eyes watered, but she kept her emotions in check. She would cry later on her own time. Kari called her father, with whom she had a semi-estranged relationship. She couldn’t forgive his alcoholism and had been disappointed by his lack of strength and reluctance to behave as she felt a traditional father should. Men always seemed to let Kari down. I felt I was another body on a stack of underperforming males. Kari always depended on herself first, then her female friends, and then, to a lesser degree, her sisters and mother. Then she might get to me.

In an uncharacteristic fit of sentimentality, I called the El Encanto Hotel in Santa Barbara and booked the Presidential Suite for the upcoming weekend. Kari and I would return to the scene of our wedding and spend a quiet if not quite honeymoonlike few days there. We visited one of Kari’s favorite public gardens, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Kari was weak, severely underweight. She appeared ten to fifteen years older
than her forty-one years. She was having problems walking, so we got her a wheelchair and a walker. She was humiliated but knew it was necessary. At least we were fortunate to have the means to spend time together in beautiful Santa Barbara.

In the midst of all this sadness and exhausted hope, Kari’s and my screenplay,
Hostage for a Day,
was finally coming to fruition. We received a green light from the Fox Network. Shooting was to begin in early October in Toronto. Candy was directing and doing a cameo. George Wendt, John Vernon, Robin Duke, Don Lake, and Christopher Templeton would costar. Peter Torokvei had extensively rewritten our script. Because of the direction John wanted to take the material, the words had become much sillier. Kari and I knew this was not going to be the next
Dog Day Afternoon,
the great Sidney Lumet hostage situation story with a documentary feel. We resigned ourselves to that fact, but we were elated the film was finally getting made. It had taken a decade of work.

As first timers, we got the Screen Writers Guild minimum, which at that time was around $30,000. But Alan Berger’s office got two bumps written into our contract. One was that Hildebrand and Crane would share a producers’ credit. However, because the twenty-day shoot was taking place in Canada, the production company could only have so many U.S. personnel in key positions. Thus we became “supervising production consultants.” That’s a title that translates from the Canadian into “Stay the fuck out of the way, eh.” So we got $10,000 for making ourselves scarce. Then we got an additional ten grand from the “if the picture gets made” clause. All told, our work on the script and our nonwork on the production brought home some $50,000. We were thrilled. We would happily watch from the sidelines while all the Second City alumni—Candy, Wendt, Duke, Torokvei, Lake, and John Hemphill—went to work.

Kari’s treatments had concluded. The medical establishment said nothing else could be done. There were still hundreds of alternative options, but Kari and I had agreed that we were folding up the Red Cross tent. If Kari bade a last farewell to our house, her garden, or her cat Nutmeg, she did it privately. We were still looking forward. We were going to Toronto to see our film get made.

I had hundreds of thousands of miles logged on Air Canada. I redeemed some of them for three first-class tickets from L.A. to Toronto on a jumbo 747. Kari, her mother, Loretta, and I sat in the first row behind the nose of the aircraft. Kari mentioned that this was the first time
in her life she’d ever flown first class. That made me feel good. Mother and daughter gabbed while I read and thought about what would happen next.

At Pearson International Airport in Toronto, we were picked up by the Prestige Limousine Service and driven out to the Candy’s property in Queensville. John and Rose had graciously opened their rustic, two-story guesthouse overlooking acres and acres of golden farmland just for us. I knew getting Kari up and down the stairs was going to be problematic. She was very frail. We were not going to be taking walks through the cornfields. In fact, the truth of the moment was that Kari was bed bound. She was never even going to make the visit out to the film set.

Each morning I drove with John to the production office. Everyone on the office staff and production crew was excited about working with one of Canada’s favorite sons. I pinched myself each time I read Kari’s and my name on the script’s title page. The hell with Sidney Lumet, we were the authors of a big-time movie. We were in Toronto in the beautiful autumn making a film.

Loretta spent the first week with Kari but then had to go back to her job in Los Angeles, so I dipped into my Air Canada Aeroplan miles basket and exchanged Loretta for Kari’s middle sister, Deborah. During the day, I would check in with Kari and her minders. As Kari was becoming less and less verbal, Deborah mostly provided me with the patient updates. Deborah’s week sped by and then she, too, had to get back to work. Air Canada’s next guest was Kari’s best friend, Linda, who was still holding out hope for some kind of supernatural or Wiccan intervention. Linda chanted and prayed a lot during that third week at the farm, but Kari was declining rapidly. Her speech and appetite were almost gone.

One evening Kari tried to speak. I was dreading what I thought I was going to hear, that she was in extreme pain, that she needed more meds or, worst of all, that she was ready to say good-bye. She whispered a few words, and to my great relief, I finally understood what she was trying to say—she wanted French fries and a chocolate shake. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This was way out of the bounds of Kari’s normal comestibles. She had always avoided fast food like some people shun Woody Allen movies, but we both knew it didn’t matter anymore, and I was just happy she wanted to eat anything. I went to a Harvey’s a few miles away and picked up her order. This was a big treat, and she delighted in every fry and every sip of her shake.

As the days went by, Kari began withdrawing from the world. Linda or I would ask her a question regarding her comfort or whether she wanted something to eat or drink, and we were not sure our words were getting through. I did things by rote, just moving ahead. Kari hadn’t bathed in a few days so I carried her ninety-pound frame into the bathroom and carefully placed her in a warm bath. She didn’t speak but her face broke into a beatific smile.

On Friday night, October 1, John and I drove into Toronto to do a live remote interview for
Larry King Live.
John was promoting the opening day of
Cool Runnings,
his best work in years. Larry asked John inane questions that had nothing to do with the film. After the broadcast, John and I noted that Larry was losing it.
Cool Runnings
turned out to be a big hit for Disney, Dawn Steel, and John Candy, reviving John’s somewhat sagging film career.

I arrived back at the guesthouse around midnight, quietly got undressed, and slipped into bed next to my sleeping wife. I stared into the blackness. My boss was on top of the world, my wife at the bottom of the sea. I listened to Kari’s light breathing and wondered where she was, dreaming on the edge of two worlds. I could feel the warmth of her body. I knew I couldn’t do anything for her except make her as comfortable as possible.

The next morning I awoke to a scene out of
The Godfather.
I felt wet and sticky like the character played by John Marley. As Kari slept, I slowly pulled my side of the covers down and discovered not a horse’s head but a mattress and sheets soaked with urine. Kari’s body was on its way to a total shutdown. When Linda woke up, I told her what had happened. We moved Kari into another bed and began cleaning up the mess. We concluded it was time for yet another indignity for Kari, diapers.

All day Saturday, Linda and I spoke to Kari individually and together. We both knew the situation was not going to improve. I whispered to Kari, “It’s okay, baby. You can let go.”

I watched as my wife, my love, my partner, my teacher lay not speaking, not eating, just staring into space. I was there talking, reading out loud, being present all day and night. I couldn’t eat and barely got myself to the bathroom. I didn’t want Kari to embark on her last journey without seeing her off.

Early Sunday morning, I woke for no apparent reason and looked at the clock. It was 2:30. I lay there in the dark. I listened for Kari’s breathing.
The room was silent. I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and looked over at Kari. Her eyes were open. I felt the top of her head. She was warm. I looked at her again, listening and watching for any sound, any movement. She was gone. Typical of Kari, she had departed on her own terms. I kissed her lightly and put my head on her thin, soundless chest. I thought my own heart would burst.

After composing myself I padded down the hallway to Linda’s room. I tapped on the door and announced with resignation and a perverse sense of relief, “Linda, Kari’s gone.” I returned to Kari’s side. I told her I loved her and missed her already as Linda entered the room. She had just lost her best friend, but she had been preparing for this moment for a long time. We tried to close Kari’s eyes but they refused, not like my dad’s when I had viewed his body at the Scottsdale Police Department morgue fifteen years earlier. “Still stubborn,” I said, and Linda and I laughed.

We held our own wake, sharing stories that produced both tears and laughter. We stood on either side of the bed looking at Kari and talking in reverential tones until the sun came up.

This was to be day one of life without Kari. We had shared eleven years. As I looked at her prematurely aged but now restful face, I thanked her for teaching me responsibility, work ethic, and precision of craft. I thanked her for showing me what a grown-up relationship looked like. Although I had matured I still apologized to her for my many mistakes and the numerous silly and stupid things I had said and done during our life together. I thought of all the changes over those years. I had full-time work with John. I was making steady money. I owned a house. I tried to imagine what my life was to become without her calming adult wisdom. The last two years of her life had been anything but calm. I had filled numerous roles: husband, lover, friend, admirer, cheerleader, and finally caretaker. Kari was a selfless, gracious citizen who would be missed by many. She was also very competitive. She could be a two-headed monster. Sometimes her competitive nature was good for me, and sometimes it was just a pain in the ass. Sometimes I felt as if we were competitors when we were supposed to be on the same team.

Linda and I made the necessary phone calls to family and friends. There were tears and gasps followed by a gaping silence as the news was processed. Everyone had expected it, of course, but still the passing sent a shockwave through Kari’s community. It was just the exclamation point on a life much too short.