God Hates Us All (11 page)

“Well,” Dad says, “this isn’t the way I wanted you two to meet.” Janine, following his cue, extends a hand. I ignore it.

“It’s Mom,” I say. “She just collapsed in the kitchen. There’s an ambulance on the way.”

MY FATHER AND I HAVE TAKEN UP semipermanent residence in the waiting room at the Nassau University Medical Center. We try to keep our conversations limited to the declining fortunes of the New York Islanders and order-taking as we alternate trips to the hospital cafeteria and replenish cigarettes. A blurry parade of doctors keeps us apprised of my mother’s condition. The television in the visitors’ room tells us when Christmas Day has come and gone.

At the outset, my mother’s condition confounds the staff. Her lead physician, Dr. Winfield Edgars—“Call me Dr. Win, everyone else does”—pulls no punches in his initial diagnosis: “What troubles me is that her symptoms strongly suggest a brain tumor.” I soon learn that the troubling part for Dr. Win isn’t my mother’s worsening condition, but the lack of any evidence to support his diagnosis. Despite a battery of
tests and scans, the tumor stubbornly refuses to present itself.

On the fourth day Dr. Win enters the room with a smile. “She doesn’t have a tumor,” he says. His voice can barely contain his excitement as he explains how her symptoms had fooled him. “Paraneoplastic syndrome. A few years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to diagnose this thing. We’re still not exactly sure how it works. Her brain—actually, her nervous system—is being attacked by an immune response to some-thing else. What we’re seeing in her brain are the symptoms, not the underlying cause. We had to go back and figure out what was triggering the immune response.”

“And?” my father asks.

Dr. Win beams. “Lung cancer,” he says.

“She doesn’t even smoke,” I say.

“Does she live with a smoker?” he asks, seemingly oblivious to Dad’s nicotinestained teeth and fingers. “Could also be asbestos. How old’s your house?”

Dr. Win’s work is done. We’re turned over to Dr. Best in Oncology, who’s as warm as Dr. Win, only without the sense of humor. “Ninety percent of these cases don’t make it past five years,” he begins, before launching into a vivid description of the aggressive radiation therapy she’s about to endure.

I want to cry. I suspect my father does as well. Out of respect for unspoken family tradition, we won’t do it in front of each other.

My mother’s emotional state varies with her treatment schedule. But the feeling I get from her more than any other
feels an awful lot like relief. She insists that I return to work. “Get back to your life. It’s not healthy for you to be here.”

So I do. Despite the crappy winter weather, the city feels crowded and alive. It’s almost New Year’s Eve, so the preppies and college kids are home from school. Business is brisk, for which I’m grateful. The constant motion helps to keep me numb.

The week I took off from work to be at the hospital and Danny Carr’s current three-week vacation to Florida have conspired to wreck my personal finances, forcing me back on my subsistence diet of hot dogs and pizza. I’m definitely going to be late on my January rent, so I avoid Herman by using the fire escape to get to and from my room. I’m also ignoring Henry Head, lest he hit me with a bill.

Tana pages me every day. Most of the time I don’t call her back. I’m just not up for talking. But she breaks down my resistance with the offer of a home-cooked meal, delivered to my room at the Chelsea. I meet her at Penn Station, where she debarks the train carrying two steaming aluminum trays and a small Igloo cooler. “Homemade ice cream,” she says. “We can pick up a bottle of wine on the way back to your place. Is Chardonnay okay? I think it will pair well with the chicken.” She’s apparently joined a wine-appreciation club at college.

We stop for the wine and plastic cutlery, as I have no silverware. Tana dishes out the servings onto paper plates. When she produces two candles from her jacket, I raid the communal bathroom for two rolls of toilet paper to use as
holders. We light the candles and toast with plastic cups. I dig greedily into the meal. Tana makes up for my lack of conversation with a series of thoughtful questions about my mother, which I answer mainly with nods and shrugs. “How about your dad?” she asks. “Is he still going to leave her for Janine?”

“I don’t have any idea,” I confess, having temporarily broken from the meal for a cigarette next to the open window.

“Aren’t you freezing? You’re not going to want any ice cream.”

It dawns on me for the first time that Tana is wearing makeup, as she had at the Christmas party. And while she hasn’t repeated the dramatic cleavage, she still looks good in designer jeans and a tight sweater that doesn’t hide her curves. “I do declare, Miss Kirschenbaum, that someday you’re going to make one of those sorry excuses for men you like to date a very, very happy camper.”

Tana sighs. “I’m so done with sorry excuses for men.”

I lift my cup. “Here, here. To muffdiving.” She laughs, spitting out some of her wine. I tear off a piece of one of the candleholders and hand it to her.

“At least I’d be getting some,” she says.

“Come on. It’s not that bad, is it?” I ask. Her expression is half-quizzical. And half something else. “How bad is it?”

“You know I’ve never gone all the way, right?”

“With a woman? Hey, homosexuality’s not for everyone.”

“I mean with anyone.”

“Wai … Wha … Never?”

“I was kind of thinking,” she says, her voice barely a whisper, “that maybe it should be you who initiates me.”

A thought pops into my brain. “The other night, when you said you wanted to talk to me …” She nods shyly. I’ve never seen Tana so vulnerable. I pull her close for a hug, and another thought creeps into my head.

Oh. So close.
But
.

“First of all,” I say, “I’m incredibly flattered….”

“Oh God,” says Tana. She’s already pushing away from me. “Here we go.”

“You’re taking this the wrong way. You are a brilliant, incredibly sexy woman, Tana Kirschenbaum. But you’re also my sister—maybe not by blood, but you know what I mean. Sex for me is …”

I stop. I don’t have any idea how to finish the sentence. What does sex mean to me? Why don’t I want to have it with Tana?

She’s cleaning up dinner. “I can do that,” I say. Tana puts down a plate and grabs her coat off the bed. “Can we talk about this?”

She’s putting on her jacket. “There isn’t anything to talk about,” she says. “You’re right. Bad idea. Totally retarded.”

“I don’t remember saying any of those things.”

She’s walking out the door. “I should go.”

“Can I at least walk you to the station?” I follow after her, hoping the cold air will clear my head and let me undo what-ever damage I’ve done. She pauses in the hallway, waiting for me to catch up.

But she changes her mind the moment we reach the street. “You know what? It’s too cold. I’ll just get a cab.” Tana flags a cab before I can offer a counterargument.

“Thanks for dinner.”

“Tell your mom I’m going to come see her,” Tana says. Then she closes the door and the cab pulls away.

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN RETURNING to the coffin I call home and besides, I’m feeling pretty goddamn sorry for myself. At times like these, there’s really no substitute for getting good and drunk. Out of convenience, I choose the Mexican place next door.

I’m throwing back my first shot of tequila when I remember I’m still broke. I find a ten in my pocket, money I’ve budgeted for the weekend’s food. I work through the math—spacing out the left overs from Tana’s meal, I should survive through Monday. So now I’ve got three shots and a tip. Enough for a buzz, maybe, but not quite the obliteration I’d been hoping for.

By the time the third shot is blazing down my food pipe, I’m pouring my troubles out to the bartender. Ernesto from Nicaragua. Who is, right now, the wisest man in the world.

“So what can you tell me, Ernesto? That I’m an idiot? That love is impossible? That I’m a stupid gringo whose problems don’t amount to a hill of beans?”

“Ah.” Ernesto nods sagely. “
Dios nos odia todos.
”

“That’s pretty,” says a voice from behind me. It’s K. She looks like she’s been crying. “What does it mean?”

“I’m pretty sure he said that ‘God hates us all.’ But I flunked Spanish so who knows for sure. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replies. “Just fine. Nate and I broke up.”

I’ve just broken my best friend’s heart. My mother is dying in the hospital while my father cheats on her with a bottle blonde. Yet the news from K. makes me bite my lip to keep from smiling. “Well, pull up a seat, lady. The lonely hearts club is in session.”

“Why?” asks K. “What’s going on with you?” I bring her up to speed about Tana and my mother, adding that I’m too broke to get drunk. “You poor baby,” she says. “Let me take care of you.”

We order another round of drinks from Ernesto, who frankly looks relieved to be done with me. I tell K. about the Christmas party and the hospital. She tells me about her breakup with Nate.

She’d been offered what she called an “obscene” amount of money for two weeks of shoots in Southeast Asia. Victoria’s Secret was starting a new ad campaign there and K., as it turned out, still had a devoted following among red-blooded Asian men. She’d intended to turn the job down—the money would be nice, but she didn’t
need
it, and did she really want
to go back to the loneliness, even if it was only for two weeks? But when she told Nate about the offer, he freaked out. Taking advantage of Scott the Drummer’s winter break, Venomous Iris planned to take up residence in the studio for as long as it took to finish the album. Nate insisted he needed her for emotional support. But after one day in the studio, she realized that her real job was to remind them to eat in the midst of a collective heroin binge and, when supplies ran low, to score some more.

“I mean, I’m not a fucking drug dealer,” she says.

“Thanks,” I reply with the appropriate sarcasm.

“You’re different,” she says. “Pot’s not a drug. It’s a survival tool. Anyway, he said that if I wouldn’t do it, he could find some other slut who would. And that maybe he’d finally get a decent blow job. Can you believe him?”

“What an asshole,” I say.

“What an asshole,” she says.

An hour later, K. and I are having sex in my room. It’s drunk and sloppy and I’m not really sure that I’m not dreaming the whole thing until I wake up the next morning and she’s still there. Then she wakes up and we do it again, almost completely curing my hangover.

We walk glove-inmitten down the street to a French bistro. K. insists on paying for the eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys. “A hard-luck case” is how she describes me to the waiter, but the food’s restorative powers temper any injury to my masculine pride. We return to my room, where, this time, we get it right. The sex begins tenderly, the mystery of
the new mixed with an intimacy that’s just starting to feel familiar, and ends athletically, our two bodies moving like pistons.

Now we’re holding hands on the elevator, our fingers intertwined. We ride to the fourteenth floor, where Roscoe Trune’s annual New Year’s Eve party is under way. There is no official ownership of rooms at the Chelsea, but the suite might as well belong to Roscoe, an openly gay poet from Savannah, Georgia, who’s resided there for almost as long as I’ve been alive. K., the invited guest, is greeted with kisses on each cheek; I’m treated cordially, but with the subtly raised eye-brows that benefit the arrival of a scandalous home-wrecker. They’d expected to see Nate.

The exception is Ray, who eyes me with a newfound re-spect. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he tells me. “I didn’t think anyone was breaking that ice.” The pupils of his eyes look like Oreo cookies. I’ll later find out that he—along with most of the party—is on something called “Adam,” a psychedelic that by the time I get around to trying it, a few years later, is better known as “Ecstasy.” What I know now is that every conversation seems to wind up with someone rubbing my sleeves to feel the texture or offering a non sequitur commentary on the shine of my hair. Undue credit, I think, for a guy who simply hasn’t bothered to shower.

Later, while K. dances with a shirtless, muscled man who Ray reassures me is “one of Roscoe’s boy toys,” he proposes that I join him on a weekend trip to South Korea. “I’m going to see a goddess,” Ray says.

“You’re on drugs, Ray. Try to keep it on Earth for us in the cheap seats.”

“I shit you not, man. She’s a real live goddess.”

“Really? Does she ride a unicorn?”

“She’s a
Kumari
, man. A bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju.”

“Tally who?”

“Taleju. It’s the Nepalese name for the goddess Durga. A total bad-ass. Like, she’s got ten arms and carries swords and shit. She rides a fucking tiger.”

“I’ll admit that the ten arms present some interesting possibilities, but take it from me: Women and sharp objects, they do not mix well.”

Ray claps his hands. “I’m not saying she
is
Durga. The point is that Devi—that’s her name, Devi—was chosen from like thousands of girls to be Durga’s earthly incarnation.”

“Kind of like the Miss Universe pageant,” I suggest.

“Exactly! Only a lot more hardcore. She had to have what they call ‘the Thirty-Two Perfections.’ A voice as soft and clear as a duck’s. A chest like a lion. A neck like a conch shell.”

“Every time I start to take you seriously, I remember you’re on drugs.”

“I am being totally serious, man. For ten years, her feet were not allowed to touch the ground. Some dudes carried her everywhere in one of those, you know, canopy things. People lined up to touch them—her fucking feet!—for good luck. Even the king of Nepal, once a year he got down on his knees and kissed those hoofers.”

“And you think she’ll slum with a mortal like you?”

“That’s the best part. She’s not technically a goddess anymore.
Taleju
means ‘virgin.’ Once she, you know,
bleeds
, the gig is up—Durga’s got to find herself a new host. And Devi? One day she’s a goddess, the next she’s a woman with serious selfesteem issues. Or what I like to call my wheelhouse!”