Suburban Renewal (15 page)

Everybody looked down at their hands, trying to get the corn shuck going in the right direction.

The spoonful of masa paste had to cover the hoja completely with no holes, but still be spread thinly enough not to overwhelm the filling.

The giggling and finger-pointing almost got out of hand before it was decided that Edna and Lauren were not up to the challenge and were promoted to being filling fillers.

With more than our share of stupid mistakes, we finally got the tamales rolled up and into the pressure cooker.

“No wonder we buy these in cans,” Edna said. “By the time they're cooked it will be nearly midnight.”

“Then we'll eat them tomorrow,” Mike said.

And we did. For breakfast. He and I couldn't wait and I dished them up in lieu of scrambled eggs or oatmeal.

“Sam, these are great,” Mike told me. “I think this is the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.”

“Once I week,” I vowed. “I don't care how time-consuming and complicated these are. I'm going to make a batch once a week.”

I kept my word on that.

Thursday became tamale day. I devoted the entire waking hours of Thursday to the project. Mike began to look forward to it. People dropped in to help out. We made bigger and bigger batches to share.

When Mike's friend Daryl tasted them, he was very complimentary.

“I've got to take some of these back to the city,” he told me. “They are simply awesome.”

Like the ladies from the San Antonio church, I wrapped them by the dozen in aluminum foil and put them in brown paper bags for delivery. I took them to the pastor, both mine and the Maynards'. I dropped some off at the firehouse and to the ladies at the library. I'd leave several bags at the Maynard home. They not only ate them, but Edna served them at her parties. I even took some by Cherry Dale's place, since I knew how much Nate loved them.

When I stopped by with my ration for the drugstore, Doc thanked me and then motioned me to come to the back.

“I need a favor from you,” he said.

Once we got into the harsh light of the back room I could see his expression was very grave.

“What's happened?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing has happened.” He handed me a wide-mouthed, plastic-topped brown medicine bottle. The familiar Maynard Drugstore label was blank except for the name Mike.

“What are these?”

“Pills. Mike asked me for them,” Doc said. He hesitated as if reluctant to say anything more.

“The doctor didn't order anything new,” I told him, confused.

“They're schedule-two drugs, not one of his prescriptions.”

I looked for dosage directions on the label. It was blank.

“Mike asked me for these,” Doc repeated. “I've had them here in this bottle for almost a month and haven't been able to give them to him.”

“I don't understand.”

“He said that he wanted something…” Doc's lower
lip began to tremble. He bit down on it, but that didn't help much. “Mike said that if it got too bad, he wanted something to be able to end it. That if it came to that, he wanted…”

The trembling shuddered into a sob. Doc Maynard suddenly looked a thousand years old. I took the bottle out of his hand and embraced him.

“Don't think about it again,” I said. “I'll see that Mike gets these. That will be his choice, one way or another. Just let it go, Doc. We love him and we've done all we can. Now we do what we think is right and not ever look back on it again.”

1992

A
s Mike lingered painfully on through spring, his condition grew more and more grave. He developed endocarditis and the doctors told us he'd never be able to fight off the infection. Somehow he did. He suffered a bout with pneumocystis pneumonia, they warned us that it was highly unlikely that he would recover, but he did.

All through those first months of the year, we lived in daily expectation of my brother's last breath. We were ready for it. He was ready for it. But his life dragged on and on in obvious suffering.

I was sitting the final exam of Russian History: 1917 to the Present when my pager began to vibrate. I glanced down and saw Mike's home number. Sam knew I was in the middle of a test. He would only call if it was an emergency. I knew my brother was dead. My beloved brother, who had been my closest buddy, my hero. I'd wanted to be with him when he died. I'd wanted to be holding his hand when he stepped into the next world. But, as always, I'd been out doing my own thing, pursuing my own goals, seeking my own life. My brother was dead. I'd missed his last moment and there was nothing I could do about it.

Guilty, grieving, I wanted to just sign the test paper and hand it in. But I got a grip on myself. Nobody would be helped by me wasting time and money failing a class. Mike had been proud of me. He was proud of my determination to take control of my own life, to go after what I wanted. I gathered my composure, took a deep breath and finished the exam.

As soon as I handed it in I hurried to the block of pay phones out in the commons. I was crying now, thinking of Mike, as I dialed his number.

“He's gone,” Sam said simply.

“I'll be right there” was my only reply.

The next two days remain a blur in my mind. Friends and family filled Mike's house. There seemed not to be any place to retreat to from the noise and the conversation. Arrangements for the funeral had already been made by Mike himself. He'd picked the order of service, the music, the friends to speak. He told the Reverend Shue that it was one of the few perks of knowing you're going to die young—getting a hip send-off.

I don't know if
hip
would have been the correct word to describe the funeral. It certainly had its hip moments.

The pallbearers were all in tuxes with matching cummerbunds. There was original music, some of it strange, almost free form. A black woman with dread-locks played a medley of Broadway hits on the xylophone. An old fashioned barbershop quartet sang a very unique rendition of “I'll Be a Sunbeam for Jesus.”

For the scripture reading, instead of the comfort of the Psalms or the hopefulness of the New Testament, Mike had chosen a passage from Job.

In lieu of eulogies, there were poetry readings. Most
of the poems were about Mike. Others were about AIDS. Some of the verses were brimming with good humor. Others welling with sadness.

One young man got up to read and his words were so angry and in-your-face I was startled. It was like an indictment of all the friends and family who were not homosexuals. Protectively, I looked over at my parents. My mother was looking straight ahead, her expression was completely blank. She wasn't hearing anything. Dad had his head bent, discreetly crying into his handkerchief.

Of course the service moved on, through more music, more poems, more prayers. Still, it was the poem of the young man that stayed with me.

At the cemetery, I shook hand after hand of people I'd known all my life and people I'd never seen before. They all were touched by Mike's life in some way.

Under the bright green awning I was claustrophobic. As if he sensed what I was feeling, Sam took my hand. I thought of how many times when I was little and afraid that Mike had done the very same thing.

The gravesite was so covered in flowers that if I squinted, I could almost imagine that no casket was even there. But I didn't have the luxury of such a fantasy. Mike was gone. Mom and Dad would be depending upon me.

When the last prayer was spoken and the final admonition to turn to dust was made, we headed for the long black limo. The funeral director drove us back to Mike's house, which was immediately filled with flowers.

The family formed an impromptu reception line as neighbors, visitors and consolers of every sort made a path to the door.

I shook hand after hand, often of people I didn't know.

“Thank you, so much.”

“You are so kind.”

“I'm sure Mike would have appreciated you being here.”

My own responses began to sound automatic and insincere even to my own ears.

In a long line of men I'd never met, I looked up and saw a familiar face. The sight was as welcome as a life preserver to a drowning victim.

“Dr. Muldrew,” I said, surprised.

He ignored my offered hand and wrapped me in a big, generous hug. “Corrie, I'm so sorry for your loss,” he said.

“Thank you,” I answered. Then at the risk of being rude to people waiting to talk to me, I asked to speak to him privately.

We moved away from the front entry, through the house and out the sliding glass door to the little brick patio. The day was as gray and overcast as my mood, but the shoots of green in the lawn and on the trees weren't quite the dull colorlessness that I felt.

We sat down across from each other at the picnic table.

“When I said I wanted to run into you on another occasion, this wasn't it,” I told him.

He nodded and gave me a little smile.

“I've been here several times to see Mike,” he told me. “I've met your husband. He's a nice guy. I like him.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “I feel mostly numb. It's
strange how you know this is going to happen, you expect it to happen, you're waiting for it to happen, and when it does, it just feels like a terrible surprise.”

“I want to reassure you,” he said. “That although I'm sure you'll quite naturally feel tremendous sadness and grief for a while, don't worry that you'll fall back into that dark place you were in before. We're just beginning to understand the physiological components of psychological distress. But statistically, you're not a lot more vulnerable than anyone else.”

“Oh,” I said, a little bit startled. “I hadn't even thought about the possibility of getting depressed again.”

“That's good,” he told me. “It's very positive to just keep moving forward. But if you begin to feel like you're relapsing, give me a call. We can get you back into treatment, back on the medication very quickly.”

“Okay, sure.”

“That wasn't what you wanted to ask me?”

“No, it wasn't,” I told him. “I really wanted to find out about the young man who read that poem, the one about our ‘straight' jacket.”

“Ah,” Dr. Muldrew said, nodding. “Cliff.” He hesitated as if collecting his thoughts. “Cliff is an angry guy,” he said finally. “I'm sorry if what he said hurt you.”

“It did hurt,” I admitted. “More than that, I really didn't understand it. Everybody who was here, everybody who supported Mike during his illness and showed up at his funeral…we all loved Mike…gay or straight, we all loved him.”

Dr. Muldrew agreed. “But sometimes love itself can be a burden. It can hold us back.”

I glanced at him skeptically. “I'm not sure I believe that,” I told him.

“Did you ever wonder why Mike didn't have a partner?” he asked. “Why he didn't have one permanent man in his life?”

“I guess I never thought about it,” I said. “He never mentioned anyone. Whenever I'd asked him about his love life, even before I knew he was gay, he always said that there was nobody special.”

“Because there wasn't,” Dr. Muldrew said. “Mike could never commit to anyone because he felt as if it was unfair to do so while he was in the closet. He was in the closet because he loved you and your parents. And he thought that admitting that he was gay would be a terrible disappointment to his family. So he
played
it straight even if he wasn't. And he cheated himself out of the kind of intimate relationship that every human being deserves to enjoy.”

“So it's our fault, because he loved us?”

“No, ultimately everyone is responsible for his own life,” Dr. Muldrew said. “If Mike cheated himself out of a life partner because he was afraid to trust his family with the truth about himself, then that was his mistake and his loss.”

“I honestly don't know how we would have felt if he'd have told us he was gay, without telling us that he was dying,” I said.

“From what I've seen,” Dr. Muldrew said, “all of you, even your mother, would have done just fine.”

“Still, Cliff probably does have cause to be mad at us,” I said.

“In a way, I guess he does,” he said. “Cliff isn't mad at you specifically. He's angry because sometimes it seems that even when our heterosexual families and
friends love us, they never seem to make much effort to understand us.”

I was beginning to think I didn't understand anyone.

Cherry Dale showed up at the funeral, virtually unrecognizable beneath the bruises. All the rumors that had been whispered around town for years now were suddenly evidenced and it wasn't pretty. Even the Reverend Shue was aghast at the sight of her.

“What happened?” I asked her, though in my heart I already knew the answer.

“Floyd didn't want me to come to Mike's funeral,” she told me. “I never go out when I'm beaten up, so he beat me up to keep me from going out.”

I felt a rush of anger and hatred for Floyd, but they were almost overshadowed by my guilt about Cherry Dale.

“Mike was a good friend to me,” she told me. “Floyd would have had to break my neck to keep me away from here.”

The thought of what the woman was going through made me nauseous.

“What can we do to help you, Cherry Dale?” I asked her.

“Don't worry about me,” she said. “I know how to handle Floyd. I'll be fine.”

She didn't look as if she was going to be fine.

“Nate's not going back to that house,” I whispered to Sam as I passed him in the hallway.

He nodded agreement.

“Even seeing it, I can't believe it,” he said. “Do you think I should call the sheriff?”

“She says that she can handle it,” I told him. “If she won't help herself, can anyone else really help her?”

It was a rhetorical question and Sam didn't try to an
swer. I knew he felt as badly as I did. We had both been so busy with our lives and distracted with our situation, we'd tried to ignore what was happening. We could no longer do that. If we couldn't help Cherry Dale, at least we could take our son away from there.

At Mike's house friends continued to drop by. Mom was so much at her best, dressed in a suit that Mike had picked out for her years ago, she was the elegant caring hostess. As the afternoon dragged on forever, she was still smiling, but I knew that she was emotionally exhausted. I hope that I never know what it is like to bury my own child. My heart went out to her. I wanted to help.

Lauren and Nate were becoming very bored, so I asked Mom to take them to her house. I whispered in Lauren's ear that it would be a good idea to get her grandma to take a nap. She gave me a wink to signal her willingness to be a co-conspirator. It was amazing how suddenly my little girl who needed all my attention and protection had turned into a strong young woman that I could depend upon.

As the circle of people dwindled, the reminiscences became more bittersweet. Ultimately, it was just me and Sam and Doc remembering Mike and laughing about things that may have happened ten years earlier.

“I always felt bad about losing his money,” Sam said.

My dad patted him on the knee. “I'm sure he was much happier to give it to you than to the doctors and hospitals and drug companies.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“We'll have to sell his house to pay off what he owes,” my father continued. “We'll be lucky if that gets his estate in the black. He left his half of the drug
store to me. It's not worth much. I don't think we could even find a buyer if we looked for one.”

“Probably not,” I agreed.

A thoughtful silence settled among the three of us. It was Sam who finally broke it.

“He hung in there a long time,” he said. “I never would have believed that he'd hold on as long as he did.”

It was true. We'd seen him come back time and time again when the doctors had warned us that he was nearly gone.

My father nodded. “You never gave him the drugs, did you?”

Sam seemed surprised.

“Yes, of course I did,” he said.

“When?”

“The day that you gave them to me,” Sam told him.

“What did he say?”

“Not much,” Sam replied. “I handed the bottle to him and he looked inside and thanked me and said that it was perfect.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked them.

My father hesitated for a moment, as if not sure how much to reveal. Then with a sigh he explained it all.

“Mike asked me to give him something to end it,” my father said. “He said if it got too bad, he wanted to be in control of how and when to go.”

My heart caught in my throat.

“Oh, Daddy, that must have been so terrible for you,” I said.

He shrugged. “Mike told me exactly what he wanted. He'd thought it through completely. He even showed up to sign the schedule, so that if an auditor
ever questioned the discrepancy, it wouldn't put my license in jeopardy.”

“That's Mike,” Sam said. “Always looking out for somebody else.”

“He never took them,” my father said. There was a puzzling question in his tone.

“Maybe he did,” Sam said.

“No.” Dad was shaking his head. “Digitalis and morphine in those doses—it was enough to kill a healthy man at twice Mike's weight. He would have gone very quickly.”