Home Is Burning (25 page)

I asked her how much she wanted for it. She reminded me that
donate
meant
free
.

“Oh, yeah, that's right,” I said, wanting to call her a smart-ass, but remembering that she too had been struck by tragedy, making us brothers, or sisters, or friends who have gone through similar shit and thus looked after one another.

“Where do you live? I'll come pick up the van this weekend if that's okay,” I said.

“That would be great. I really want to get rid of it. I'm getting remarried, moving on,” she said.

“I understand, friend. No sense making life hard and sad forever. So what's your address?” I asked.

“2600 South and 2300 East, in Spanish Fork,” she said.

“Fuck,” I said.

She paused long enough for me to realize she was probably a Mormon and that the word
fuck
had offended her. Dan, you're a fucking idiot, you fucking fat fuck, I thought to myself. Now, when I called myself fat, it wasn't much of a joke. Because I was so consumed with taking care of my dad's body, I was neglecting my own. I was eating loads of lasagna and fast food and drinking too much, all while also not exercising, leaving me at my peak weight, around 195 pounds. I had always been a skinny kid, so I felt fat as shit.

If you're not fresh on your Utah geography, Spanish Fork is about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes south of Salt Lake—in other words, not that close to our house—thereby necessitating my use of the word
fuck
. We'd agreed that I'd come and take the van off her hands the next Sunday. I told her that I'd be there around two, so she could attend church and I could get all sorts of fucked up with alcohol on Saturday night.

I stuck to that plan. Saturday night, my buddy Dom and I really tied one on. I woke up more hungover than Jesus after discovering that he could turn water into wine. “I wonder if Jesus could turn twigs into cigarettes,” I thought to myself as I lay in bed smelling of smoke. I was fully clothed and felt as though I had dumped a fifth of vodka directly on my brain.

I figured Greg and I would do this one together. We'd drive down to Spanish Fork, listen to some music, stop at Del Taco, talk about how fat I'd gotten, and wonder how long we would be forced to live our sad, parents-are-dying existence. Maybe we'd get to Spanish Fork, our bellies full of spicy chicken burritos, and decide we'd just keep driving south, maybe get to Mexico and eat some real Mexican food. We'd get along swimmingly, as usual. I wouldn't even tease him for being gay once.

“I kind of wish Dad didn't do the respirator,” I'd say.

“Me, too,” he'd say.

“But not really. You know what I mean. It's just hard. It's a lot of work,” I'd say.

“Maybe we should just keep going all the way down to Mexico, run away,” he'd suggest.

“We do have bellies full of Del Taco. We'll sit by the ocean, find some women, drink tequila, and be young and not tragic,” I'd say.

“Perfect plan, except I'm gay and I don't like tequila,” he'd say.

It would go something like that.

But, as I slowly woke up—the previous night a blur in my alcohol-soaked brain—my mom entered my basement bedroom. Greg had been on Daddy Duty the night before, so I had been able to sleep in my own bed. My mom looked especially bald and was wearing a long red coat that looked like a Navajo rug. It covered her perpetually cold body from her shoulders to her toes. She had the bright idea that she would drive the van back, even though she had crashed her much-simpler-to-drive Lexus about six times in the last three months while trying to drive under the influence of chemo brain.

One of my mom's biggest flaws is that she tries to do too much, just to prove that she cares. Though she was still beaten up from chemo, she would sit by my dad all day long. It was a testament to how much she loved him, but she looked exhausted. Visiting friends would advise that she go to her room and rest, but she would say, “I'm fine. Bob needs me,” and have a spoonful of yogurt.

“Get up. It's ten. We have to pick up that van,” she said.

“We don't have to be there until two,” I said, rolling back over in bed.

“But we don't know where Spanish Fork is,” she said.

“I know where it is. It's about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes south of Salt Lake,” I said.

“Yeah, but we don't know where their house is,” she said.

“I thought Greg and I would do this one. Then maybe flee to Mexico,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Greg's a bad driver,” she said.

“Well, he can drop me off and I'll drive the van back,” I said.

“I'm driving the van back,” she said.

I sat up in bed, taking the whole thing more seriously now. “You're not driving the van. You're a horrible driver.”

“Dan, stop. I'm a really good driver,” she said.

“You drove your car into the fence two weeks ago,” I said.

“It came out of nowhere … Get the fuck out of bed. We're leaving. You smell like cigarettes, by the way,” she said.

“You smell like cancer,” I wanted to say.

My mom persisted, so she and I got in her Lexus and began the hour to hour-and-fifteen-minute drive to Spanish Fork. I tried joking with her to spice up the drive, but she wasn't in the mood.

“They should call Spanish Fork ‘Spanish Food Utensil,'” I joked.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“They should call Spanish Fork ‘Spanish Food Utensil,'” I said again.

There was a long pause. My mom started to cry. “What are we going to do about Dad? I don't think I can handle this. How are we going to take care of him?” She had been crying a lot lately. Now that her chemo brain was subsiding, she was smacked with the reality of this grim situation.

I didn't know what to say. I knew that the upcoming months were going to suck some major dick. It wasn't going to be easy. But I didn't really want to talk about it with my mom. I was too hungover. So I repeated, “Don't you think it would be funny if they called Spanish Fork ‘Spanish Food Utensil'?”

I probably should've said something else. I probably should've reassured my mom that everything was going to be fine and that we'd make it through this as a family. I should've told her that I loved her and knew things were really hard for her right now. It would've been a nice little heart-to-heart. The two of us needed one of those. I had been hard on her lately. But instead, I said my horrible Spanish Fork line like an asshole.

I was scared shitless that we would get there and my mom would insist on driving the van to the point where I would have to tackle her to the ground in front of strangers to keep her away from the wheel. I would be judged by the Mormons and they would murmur, “He's going to outer darkness,” their version of hell, as I pried the car keys from her weak cancer hands. But I would really be saving her life, because if she got in that van, she'd drive it straight into an oil truck, sending blackened pieces of her and her Native American coat a mile into the air before landing on my I-told-you-so face.

Even though the van was free, I had high expectations. My friend Brian had been in a car accident that left him a quadriplegic, so his family had purchased a wheelchair-accessible van to get him around. It had a DVD player, great air-conditioning, and a nice sound system. Lucky Brian!

I wasn't expecting a DVD player, but I was expecting a bit more than the plus-sized jalopy the van turned out to be. It was the definition of an eyesore. It was disgusting. We got there and my first reaction was “Oh fuck, that better not be it,” remembering that I had to drive the thing an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes back.

I don't know why “oh fuck” was my initial reaction. I don't know if it was because the van was baby blue. I don't know if it was because it was the size of one of those school buses for the mentally challenged. I don't know if it was because it probably wasn't worth enough to be traded for a DVD player. I don't know if it was because of all the rust around the tire wells. I don't know if it was because it had no front passenger seat, making road head a near impossibility for safety/logistical reasons. Or if it was because the old wheelchair that a former ALS patient had used before dying was still sitting in the van like an unforgettable nightmare, making it seem haunted. But that was my reaction.

My mom's was, “Do you think it's that blue piece of shit?” which was a bit more precise a response than mine had been.

I thought we should turn around, head back to Salt Lake, fork over the thirty-five thousand dollars, and get a van that didn't look like God's middle finger. We could just tell them that we couldn't find the house and we had to get home because there had been an emergency back in Salt Lake, that my dad's trach had exploded and he was on the brink of death, that we would maybe come back for it if my father survived the trach explosion.

“Mom, we don't really want this thing, do we?” I asked.

“Stop it. It's not that bad. We're already here,” she protested back.

“It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and I bet it doesn't even work. We take it and then we're stuck with it sitting in our driveway, bringing down the value of our home,” I said.

My mom paused for a few seconds, so I thought I had convinced her, but instead she said, “Oh, shut up,” and hopped out of the Lexus. We had probably made a mistake by driving a luxury vehicle out to pick up something free, but fuck it. My dad was dying.

We knocked on their door and the young, tragic woman walked outside. She was still in her church clothes.

“Hi, I'm Debi, and this is my son Danny. We're here for the van,” said my mom.

I hoped for a second that the blue van in front of their house wasn't theirs, that they had the fully loaded real van in the back with
Lord of the Rings
blaring on all five DVD players.

“I'm Michelle. It's so nice to meet you. It's this blue van out front,” she said.

Fuck.

She and my mom hugged. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to hug her. I didn't think the van—given how ugly it was—called for me to sacrifice a hug, even though I was wearing a shirt that read
HUG THERAPIST
, which is often misread as
HUG THE RAPIST
.

We looked at each other and silently agreed not to hug.

I was worried that this was going to be a tear-jerking experience for my mom—meeting a woman widowed by the same disease that would eventually widow her. I hoped my mom wasn't going to bring up her illness, that this little adventure could be focused on my father's Lou Gehrig's disease rather than the cancer, and that extra tears would not be shed. After all, Michelle was just trying to take the final step in moving on with her life. We didn't need to cry.

My mom started in. “So your husband had Lou Gehrig's?”

“Yeah, he did. He was twenty-eight when he was diagnosed,” Michelle said.

“What a shitty disease,” my mom said.

Michelle looked a little offended by my mom's language. She was definitely a Mormon. I could even see a picture of Jesus hanging in her house. But she realized my mom wasn't in a great state of mind, so she forgave her, and said, “Yeah, it's pretty bad.”

“I don't know of a shittier disease,” my mom said. She then burst into tears, really sobbing hard. “I don't want to be alone,” she managed to say.

Though she was twenty years my mom's junior, Michelle was experienced in losing a husband. She pulled my mom in for a hug, rubbed her back. “It's bad, but life goes on. I'm getting remarried soon. That's why I'm trying to get rid of the van. You'll be okay.”

“I have cancer,” my mom said. “I won't be okay.”

We talked for a while longer, mainly about the disease and her husband's battle with it. The whole time I could tell she didn't want to relive the experience. She truly was trying to move on. But my mom was curious and asked all these inappropriate questions.

“How long did he last?”

“Was he able to go to the bathroom on his own or did you have to help him?”

“Could he talk?”

“Did he say ‘I love you' a lot?”

“Did he go on a respirator?”

“Are you glad he didn't go on the respirator?”

“How old were your children when he died?”

I had been hoping the van exchange wouldn't involve all this conversation. I knew we were going to be going through all this shit; why talk about it with a complete stranger? I just wanted the keys, so I could go to Del Taco, order two spicy chicken burritos, and get home so I could sleep off my hangover and prepare myself for the newest episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm
.

Then the father and mother of the dead ALS husband came out. Michelle and her husband had moved in with his parents when he was diagnosed, so they'd have some extra help. I guess they all still lived together.

The mother hugged my mom first and then looked at me. She said, “And this must be tough for you, too.” She gave me an awkward hug.

“Well, it is. But let's take a look at the van,” I said.

The father was a man's man and knew a shitload more about cars than I ever will. His handshake nearly crushed my baby-soft, never-worked-a-day-in-my-life hand. I could hear my mom continuing with the inappropriate questions while he showed me the van. “So, who are you remarrying? Do you feel like it's too soon? Are your children okay with the remarrying thing? You're moving out of your husband's parents' house, right?”

The man's man was honest and very aware of what a piece of shit the van was. He ended most sentences with “… but it still runs.” He listed off several things it had wrong with it: “It needs power steering fluid. The oil needs to be changed. The battery needs to be replaced. Sometimes it doesn't turn on. It's top-heavy, so it feels like it's going to tip over when you drive faster than forty. The lights don't always work. The back left tire has a nail in it. It doesn't pass safety inspections … but it still runs.”