Root (9 page)

I would lower the shed door and keep quiet
whenever I heard these drug deals going down. It got pretty
stifling awful quick, but it beat letting those degenerates know I
was here.

One night a squatter named Jojo came back late
and walked into the middle of a transaction. He got beaten up so
badly he had to have surgery on his face. The poor guy never slept
there again.

A couple hours sweltering in that concrete
cave, listening to the freaks outside, brought on some serious
blues. I would start thinking about mom in the hospital, missing
the old house, Jenny and Marianne. All those things would buzz
around my brain like a swarm of bees.

Night seemed to amplify all of my worries and
fears. Only when the strip of dawn light came seeping around the
edge of the door would my heart and head calm down. Some nights I
hardly slept at all.

***

We were out on a job west of town, getting
ready to do a neighborhood, a place that looked post-apocalyptic
with broken windows everywhere and hip-high weeds growing out of
sidewalks.

Wayne’s phone blasted the Monday Night
Football theme. He answered and handed it over. “It’s for
you.”

“
James?” It was Dr. Morrie, mom’s
oncologist. “You’d better come down to the hospital. Your mother’s
experiencing some complications.”

“
Right now? But I’m at
work.”

“
I’d recommend you get her as soon
as possible. It’s pretty serious.”

“
What’s going on?”

“
I’m talking kidney failure.
Internal bleeding. Hypotension.”

“
Whoa! Uh. Okay. I’ll come as soon
as I can.”

“
You’d better get here soon. She
doesn’t have much time.”

“
Time? What do you mean? Time for …
what?”

“
She’s dying, James.”

I stood there staring at the pavement in the
glaring sun, a bucket of guppies in one hand, Wayne’s phone in the
other.

“
Everything okay?” said
Wayne.

I just stared at him, speechless. The news
went against all the sunny optimism I’d been getting from all of
those nurses and residents. My mom’s tumor had been operable—low
grade, stage two, no metastasis, 87% odds of five-year
survival

Mom joked about her malingering to hang on to
the free meals and cable TV. She said I should get myself admitted
so I too could have a nice air-conditioned room and all the chicken
soup and jello I could eat.

“
This about your mother?” said
Wayne.

I managed a nod.

“
Give me that bucket. You take the
truck and go to the hospital.”

“
How you gonna get back?”

“
Don’t worry. I’ll manage. Just go.”
He handed me the keys. I took them, and looked at Wayne with a
newfound respect. Who knew that this coarse and bigoted redneck
would be such a mensch in a crisis?

***

I parked the project truck in the shade and
ran across the lot to the back entrance of the hospital, heart
pummeling my ribs. I still couldn’t believe what was happening. I
had been with mom the night before and she seemed fine.

I bypassed the elevator and ran up the stairs
to her ward. I freaked to find an empty bed and drawn curtains in
her triple room. The other patients, a couple of geezers, had no
idea who or where she was.

A nurse came over and took tapped
shoulder.

“
She’s in the ICU.”

“
The what?”

“
Intensive Care Unit.
Upstairs.”

I ran up another flight and found Dr. Morrie
in the hall.

“
She’s just out of cardiac arrest.
Follow me.”

“
Huh? Her heart …
stopped
?” This was so
surreal.

He led me into this room with all sorts of
extra machinery, but she wasn’t hooked up to anything but an IV and
some monitors.

“
Her living will asked for no
extraordinary measures.” He patted my shoulder. “Go on, spend some
time with her. She’s comfortable. And she’s conscious every once in
a while.”

I went in and pulled a seat close to her bed
and took her hand. She was still breathing. Her skin had this
grayish-yellow tinge that seemed all wrong, but her face was
relaxed. Between that and all the weight she had lost, it made her
seem younger, reminding me of those old pictures of her in our
family albums.

I took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m
here, momma.”

Her eyes flickered open to slits, narrow but
clear. “Baby boy? You home from work?”

“
We’re still at the hospital mom.
How you feeling?”

“
I’m not … I don’t … feel
anything.”

“
Well … that’s good. I suppose.
Better than to be hurting.”

“
Don’t go there. Stay away. There’s
nothing there for you. Nothing good. Only bad things.” Her voice
was all slurred, like it did when she came home from one of her
weekend benders.

“
I ain’t going anywhere, mom. I’m
staying right by your side.”

Her chest heaved. “I mean … later. It’s gonna
come and want to take you. Stay away from it. Don’t go
there.”

“
Nobody’s taking me anywhere, mom.
They said I could stay.”

“
Not the nurses, stupid. The
Reapers! Don’t let ‘em take you.”

“
You’re not making any sense, mom.
Why don’t you just lie back and relax? Get some sleep. You thirsty?
Do you want a sip of that apple juice?”

“
I want you to take your daddy’s
truck and drive to Uncle Ed’s.”

“
But I thought you wanted us to sell
it.”

“
Go see Uncle Ed. He’s your
Godfather. Now that I’m gonna be gone. He’ll take you in. He’ll
take care of you. He promised. Like I said, he’s your
Godfather.”

“
I don’t need anybody take care of
me. Besides, you’re gonna be okay.”

She sighed with exasperation. “Didn’t Dr.
Morrie tell you anything?”

“
Well, yeah, but—”

“
I haven’t been straight with you,
James. Things are worse than what I put on. A year ago they told me
I had six months.”

“
But mom—”

She clenched her eyes and winced. “It was
worth it. To have you not fret about me. To see you go about life
like everything was normal.”

“
Normal. Things haven’t been normal
… for years.”

“
Listen. I’m sorry we lost the
house. But now you’ll get my life insurance. I have some … I think.
If not … there’s my social security. That should help you get
established … in Ohio.”

My eyes began to swell and well with tears. My
throat tightened inside. I tried to fight it, but there was no way
to stop it. “I’m not going to Ohio, momma. I’m staying right here
in Florida … with you.”

She sighed again. “You doofus. You just don’t
get it, do you? I’m not gonna be here, hon. I’m moving on.” Her
head settled back into the pillow.

“
Don’t say that. You look fine.” I
tossed a worried glance at the heart monitor. “Your heartbeat’s
strong.”

I took her hand into mine. It felt so
cold.

“
Stay away from the Reapers,” she
whispered. “Promise me, you’ll do your best to stay
away.”

“
Momma?” I checked the monitor
again, and it still chugged along, registering a sharp little jag
that spiked ninety times per minute.

She was fine, just sleeping. I took her hand
and pressed it to my face.

***

I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep in that
situation, but I had been so tired. Someone had to nudge me. I woke
with a wicked crick in my neck from being all slumped in the
chair.

I looked up into the brown and sympathetic
eyes of a Hispanic nurse.

“
I am very sorry ... but your
mother. She has passed.”

“
What?” I scrambled to my feet,
nerves jangling “No way!”

I grabbed mom’s hand. It was limp and even
colder than before. The screen of the heart monitor was dark. I
stood and watched in shock as another nurse disconnected the leads
to mom’s chest, removed her IV and unclipped the oxygen monitor
from her finger.

Mom didn’t look gone. She looked like she was
still sleeping. When they pulled that sheet up over her face, I
lost it. “No! You can’t do that.” I pulled it back down.

Some doctor came in. We argued. But he was a
real sweet guy with a knack for getting things across to folks. He
got me calmed down. He closed the door and got the nurses to let me
have all the time I wanted with her, with the sheet off her face.
But as soon as it sank in that she was really gone. I didn’t want
to be in there anymore. I pecked her cheek, said goodbye and
left.

I tried to split, but the nurses diverted me
into this other room. They had some blonde lady come up and talk to
me—one of those grief counselors. I wasn’t in the mood for talking.
She offered to have a doc come over and prescribe me some drugs. I
wasn’t interested in that, either. I hated hospitals. I just wanted
out.

“
Do you have any family you need to
notify?”

“
Uncle Ed,” I said. “But he’s in
Ohio.”

“
Not a problem. I can call him for
you.”

So I passed the news to Ed. He was suitably
shocked. He started to mutter something about having to come down
again so soon for another funeral, but realized how crass it
sounded. I told him he didn’t have to come down if he didn’t want.
I wasn’t even sure there was going to be a real funeral. There
wasn’t, if I was going to have to pay for it.

I remembered that I still had the project
truck parked in the lot. I called Wayne. It was pushing six, but he
was still at the facility. He was all soft voice and sympathy. He
said he could swing by and pick it up and that I should stay home
tomorrow.

Home?

Some nurse’s aide brought me supper, but I
wouldn’t touch it. Grief lady gave me some brochures on funeral
arrangements and had me sign some forms. Turned out mom had funeral
insurance.

They finally let me leave the hospital. I went
straight to an undertaker whose office was only a couple streets
away. It was after hours, but someone was still there and they let
me in.

It was a horrible place, with all this fancy
wood paneling and flowers. I don’t even remember what it was I
arranged. It all happened in a fog. Something basic, I’m sure. Not
that it mattered. It’s not like we needed to impress anybody. She
wouldn’t have cared what kind of funeral she got, and neither did
I. It all seemed beside the point.

I wandered over to a MacDonald’s and nursed a
large Coke, hanging out there a couple hours before heading back to
the Handi-Stor.

Walking down Ocean Boulevard, I watched the
sun sink into a cloud bank. A tropical storm out in the Gulf was
approaching Sarasota. Feeder bands whipped across the
sky.

In the gaps between racing clouds, the stars
popped out one by one. It showed me the universe in a whole new and
terrifying perspective. My life was this tiny blip in a vast
continuum. I was a gnat, seconds away from going splat on some
windshield. And I actually considered jumping out into that
traffic.

I slipped in through the back gate, avoiding
Gideon’s office, because it was still early. There were still bays
open with people loading stuff in and taking stuff out. I unlocked
my shed, opened it slightly and slipped under the door, letting it
slam back down, no screens, no light.

I stripped to my undies and T-shirt and lay on
the mattress. The metal door still carried the heat of the sun that
had been beating on it. I sweated like a pig. But I didn’t care
about comfort. I just wanted to melt away into a puddle of
nothing.

As I lay there, my body heat building in the
mattress, something weird happened. The hairs on my arms and legs
unglued themselves from my sweaty skin and poked straight out, as
if drawn by a field of static electricity from a rubbed
balloon.

Fibers crawled and curled around me, and then
I knew exactly what was happening, and I welcomed it. I kept my
mind blank and let them do their thing. I let them take
me.

This was going to be a big one, I could tell.
The strands had more heft and substance than usual—scratchier,
hairier, more insistent. They pinned me to the mattress, wrapping
and twining around my limbs, poking into my ear holes and
nostrils.

And this time this enormous weight pulled down
on me, as if the Earth had acquired the gravity of Jupiter. It
mashed me into the mattress.

Something ripped free, my soul a branch
breaking loose from a tree. I sank through the mattress, sifting
through the weave and stuffing, through the pores of the concrete
floor like rain water through sand.

Chapter 12: The
Tunnel

Encased in roots, I plummeted from a great
height. How far, I couldn’t say, but on the way down I had time to
contemplate my entire life, how pointless it had been so far and
how pointless it would remain for the foreseeable
future.