The Last Song (39 page)

S
teve

H
e received his death sentence in February, while sitting in a doctor’s office, only an hour after giving his last piano lesson.

He’d started teaching again when he’d first moved back to Wrightsville Beach, after failing as a concert pianist. Pastor Harris,
without consulting him, had brought a promising student to the house a few days after Steve had moved in and asked that Steve
do him “a favor.” It was just like Pastor Harris to realize that by returning home, Steve was broadcasting the fact that he
was lost and alone and that the only way to help him was to bring a sense of purpose back into his life.

The student was Chan Lee. Both her parents taught music at UNC Wilmington, and at seventeen she was a wonderful technician,
but she somehow lacked the ability to make the music her own. She was both serious and engaging, and Steve took to her immediately;
she listened with interest and worked hard at incorporating his suggestions. He looked forward to her visits, and for Christmas,
he gave her a book on the construction of classical pianos, something he thought she would enjoy. But despite the joy he felt
in teaching again, he found himself increasingly tired. The lessons drained him when they should have given him energy. For
the first time in his life, he began to take regular naps.

Over time, he began to take longer naps, up to two hours at a time, and when he woke, he often felt pain in his stomach. One
evening while cooking chili for dinner, he suddenly felt a sharp, stabbing pain and doubled over, knocking the pan from the
stove, strewing tomatoes and beans and beef across the kitchen floor. As he tried to catch his breath, he knew something was
seriously wrong.

He made an appointment with a doctor, then went back to the hospital for scans and X-rays. Afterward, while Steve watched
the vials fill with the blood necessary for the recommended tests, he thought of his father and the cancer that had eventually
killed him. And he suddenly knew what the doctor would tell him.

On the third visit to the doctor, he found out he was right.

“You have stomach cancer,” the doctor said. He took a long breath. “And from the scans, it’s metastasized to your pancreas
and lungs.” His voice was neutral, but not unkind. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but let me start by saying it’s
not good.”

The oncologist was compassionate and yet was telling Steve that there was nothing he could do. Steve knew this, just as he
knew the doctor wanted him to ask specific questions, in the hope that talking might somehow make things easier.

When his dad was dying, Steve had done his research. He knew what it meant when cancer metastasized, he knew what it meant
to have cancer not only in his stomach, but also in his pancreas. He knew the odds of surviving were next to nil, and instead
of asking anything, he turned toward the window. On the ledge, a pigeon was settled near the glass, oblivious to what was
going on inside.
I’ve been told that I’m dying,
he thought while staring at it,
and the doctor wants me to talk about it. But there’s nothing really to say, is there?

He waited for the bird to coo in agreement, but of course, there was no response from the bird at all.

I’m dying, he thought again.

Steve remembered clasping his hands together, amazed that they weren’t shaking. If ever they should shake, he thought, it
would be at a time like this. But they were as steady and still as a kitchen sink.

“How much time do I have?”

The doctor seemed relieved that the silence had been broken at last. “Before we start going into that, I want to talk about
some of your options.”

“There are no options,” Steve said. “You and I both know that.”

If the doctor was surprised by his response, he didn’t show it. “There are always options,” he said.

“But none that can cure it. You’re talking about quality of life.”

The doctor set aside his clipboard. “Yes,” he said.

“How can we discuss quality if I don’t know how much time I have? If I only have a few days, it might mean that I should start
making phone calls.”

“You have more than a few days.”

“Weeks?”

“Yes, of course…”

“Months?”

The doctor hesitated. He must have seen something in Steve’s face that signaled he would continue to press until he knew the
truth. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve come to learn that predictions don’t mean much.
Too much lies outside the realm of medical knowledge. A lot of what happens next comes down to you and your specific genetics,
your attitude. No, there’s nothing we can do to stop the inevitable, but that’s not the point. The point is that you should
try to make the most of the time you have left.”

Steve studied the doctor, aware that his question hadn’t been answered.

“Do I have a year?”

This time, the doctor didn’t respond, but his silence gave him away. Leaving the office, Steve took a deep breath, armed with
the knowledge that he had less than twelve months to live.

The reality hit him later as he was standing on the beach.

He had advanced cancer, and there was no known cure. He would be dead within the year.

On his way out of the office, the doctor had given him some information. Little pamphlets and a list of websites, useful for
a book report but good for little else. Steve had tossed them in the garbage on the way to the car. As he stood beneath the
winter sun on the deserted beach, he tucked his hands into his coat, staring at the pier. Though his vision wasn’t what it
once was, he could see people moving about or fishing by the rails, and he marveled at their normalcy. It was as if nothing
extraordinary had happened.

He was going to die, and sooner rather than later. With that, he realized that so many of the things he’d spent time worrying
about no longer mattered. His 401(k) plan?
Won’t need it.
A way to make a living in his fifties?
Doesn’t matter.
His desire to meet someone new and fall in love?
Won’t be fair to her, and to be frank, that desire ended with the diagnosis anyway.

It was over, he repeated to himself. In less than a year, he was going to die. Yes, he’d known something was wrong, and perhaps
he’d even expected the doctor to deliver the news he had. But the memory of the doctor speaking the actual words began to
recur in his mind, like an old-fashioned record skipping on a turntable. On the beach, he began to shake. He was scared and
he was alone. Head lowered, he put his face into his hands and wondered why it had happened to him.

The following day, he called Chan and explained that he could no longer teach piano. Next he met with Pastor Harris to tell
him the news. At that time, Pastor Harris was still recovering from the injuries he’d suffered in the fire, and though Steve
knew it was selfish to burden his friend during his convalescence, he could think of no one else to talk to. He met him at
the house, and as they sat on the back porch, Steve explained his diagnosis. He tried to keep the emotion out of his voice,
but he failed, and in the end, they cried together.

Afterward, Steve walked the beach, wondering what to do with the little time he had remaining. What, he wondered, was most
important to him? Passing by the church—at that point, the repairs hadn’t been started, but the blackened walls had been torn
down and hauled away—he stared at the gaping hole that once housed the stained-glass window, thinking of Pastor Harris and
the countless mornings he’d spent in the halo of sunlight as it streamed through the window. It was then that he knew he had
to make another.

A day later, he called Kim. When he told her the news, she broke down on the phone, weeping into the receiver. Steve felt
a tightness in the back of his throat, but he didn’t cry with her, and somehow he knew he would never cry about his diagnosis
again.

Later, he called her again to ask whether the kids could spend the summer with him. Though the idea frightened her, she consented.
At his request, she agreed not to tell them about his condition. It would be a summer filled with lies, but what choice did
he have if he wanted to get to know them again?

In the spring, as the azaleas were blooming, he began to muse more often on the nature of God. It was inevitable, he supposed,
to think about such things at a time like this. Either God existed or He didn’t; he would either spend eternity in heaven,
or there would be nothing at all. Somehow he found comfort in turning the question over in his mind; it spoke to a longing
deep inside him. He eventually came to the conclusion that God was real, but he also wanted to experience God’s presence in
this world, in mortal terms. And with that, he began his quest.

It was the last year of his life. Rain fell almost daily, making it one of the wettest springs on record. May, however, was
absolutely dry, as if somewhere the faucet had been turned off. He purchased the glass he needed and began to work on the
window; in June, his children arrived. He’d walked the beach and searched for God, and somehow, he realized, he’d been able
to mend the fraying ropes that had tethered him to his children. Now, on a dark night in August, baby turtles were skimming
the surface of the ocean, and he was coughing up blood. It was time to stop lying; it was time to tell the truth.

His children were scared, and he knew they wanted him to say or do something to take their fear away. But his stomach was
being pierced by a thousand twisting needles. He wiped the blood from his face using the back of his hand and tried to sound
calm.

“I think,” he said, “I need to go to the hospital.”

R
onnie

H
er dad was hooked up to an IV in a hospital bed when he told her. She immediately began to shake her head. It wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be true.

“No,” she said, “this isn’t right. Doctors make mistakes.”

“Not this time,” he said, reaching for her hand. “And I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”

Will and Jonah were downstairs in the cafeteria. Her dad wanted to talk to each of his children separately, but Ronnie suddenly
wanted nothing to do with any of it. She didn’t want him to say anything else, not one more word.

Her mind flashed on a dozen different images: Suddenly she knew why her dad had wanted her and Jonah to come to North Carolina.
And she understood that her mom had known the truth all along. With so little time left together, he had no desire to argue
with her. And his ceaseless work on the window now made perfect sense. She recalled his coughing fit in the church and the
times he’d winced in pain. In hindsight, the pieces all fit together. Yet everything was falling apart.

He would never see her married; he would never hold a grandchild. The thought of living the rest of her life without him was
almost too much to bear. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair at all.

When she spoke, her words sounded brittle. “When were you going to tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Before I left? Or after I was back in New York?”

When he didn’t answer, she could feel the blood rising in her cheeks. She knew she shouldn’t be angry, but she couldn’t help
it. “What? Were you planning to tell me on the phone? What were you going to say? ‘Oh, sorry I didn’t mention this when we
were together last summer, but I have terminal cancer. How’s it going with you?’”

“Ronnie—”

“If you weren’t going to tell me, why did you bring me down here? So I could
watch
you die?”

“No, sweetie. Just the opposite.” He rolled his head to face her. “I asked you to come so I could watch you live.”

At his answer, she felt something shake loose inside, like the first pebbles skittering downhill before an avalanche. In the
corridor, she heard two nurses walking past, their voices hushed. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a bluish
pall over the walls. The IV dripped steadily—normal scenes from any hospital, but there was nothing normal about any of this.
Her throat felt as thick and sticky as paste, and she turned away, willing the tears not to come.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he continued. “I know I should have told you, but I wanted a normal summer, and I wanted you to have
a normal summer. I just wanted to get to know my daughter again. Can you forgive me?”

His plea cut her to the core, and she let out an involuntary cry. Her father was dying, and he wanted her forgiveness. There
was something so pitiful in that, and she didn’t know how to respond. As he waited, he reached over and she took his hand.

“Of course I forgive you,” she said, and it was then she began to cry. She leaned toward him, resting her head on his chest,
and noticed how thin he’d become without her even being aware of it. She could feel the sharp outline of the bones in his
chest, and she suddenly realized that he had been wasting away for months. It broke her heart to know she hadn’t been paying
attention; she’d been so caught up in her own life that she hadn’t even noticed.