Disposition of Remains (27 page)

“There’s nothing you can do,” Misty whispered through her painfully thin walls. “When I was in that situation I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. We have to do that for her. You just have to let her go through it.”

Let her go through it,
she’d said—“through” meaning passing from one side of something to another. There was another side. This was a phase and I would pass through it. But what awaited me on the other side? I couldn’t even imagine. I was too tired.

I slept some more. Several more
days passed. Sometimes I would soak in the bath. I grew weary of my own filth. In the bath, I could remain in my stupor, but at least be clean, if wrinkly.

Then I finally decided to change the sheets. It was one step toward doing something different, moving out of the phase—not necessarily through it, but I was knocking at the door. However, the clean sheets were so inviting that I climbed right back into bed.

“Stacia…Stacia, wake up.”

I blinked awake, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t face Wilbur the way I was. I kept my eyes closed and waited for him to go away, to vacate my realm of
darkness. I wanted him to remember me living, not wasting away in a dark room.

“Stacia, please look at me.”

I refused. I thought if I didn’t look at him, maybe he wouldn’t see me, like a child playing peekaboo. I realized how much I had missed him, but I just couldn’t move.

Then it happened.

“Stacia, please wake up. I love you,” Wilbur whispered in my ear.

He loved me.

He had looked at the emaciated, unkempt mass of cancerous sorrow that I had become, and said that he loved me.

Then I heard the bedroom door close. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him leave like that. I pulled myself up and ran for the door.

“Wilbur!” I yelled. “Wait!”

I caught him just as he was walking out the front door. He turned back and all it took was one look into his big, brown, lashy giraffe
eyes.

“I love you too. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

I almost collapsed as he hugged me, but I somehow found the strength to stand. I had passed through…something.

Part 5

Acceptance

I was in love. He knew I was in love. This horrifying thing that I had been avoiding, maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was great. Even if I could only experience it for a little while, I could know with relative certainty that it would be for the rest of my life.

“Let’s go out to dinner,” I suggested to Misty and Wilbur. “Someplace nice, my treat.”

Misty and Wilbur exchanged confused looks. I decided to ignore them.

“I’m going to take a shower. Then we’ll go.”

I wasn’t taking
no
for an answer. All I received in return was silence. I realized how odd my behavior seemed: on the brink of death by depression one minute and springing back to life the next. But Wilbur loved me. I wasn’t invisible anymore. My life wasn’t meaningless, or even a fraud. I could die knowing that someone actually cared.

I
showered and put on one of Misty’s come-knock-me-down-and-take-me dresses and slathered my face in makeup. I was determined to look my best and be a crazy person no more. When I walked back out to the living room, Wilbur and Misty were still standing there, dumbfounded.

“Let’s go,” I asserted. “I’m famished.”

And I suddenly was, probably because I hadn’t eaten anything that resembled food in the traditional sense for somewhere near a week. I looked emaciated and bloated at the same time, making my tumor more pronounced, but it didn’t matter. Wilbur loved me.

“So where are we going?” Wilbur asked.

I had no idea. Vegas was a completely different animal from when I had lived there. But I was taking charge.

“Let’s go to that place in the Paris Hotel,” I finally insisted. “The one that overlooks the Bellagio water-fountain show.”

“I love that place!” Misty concurred. “I’ll call my friend Mike. He’s the manager over there. He comes into the Imperial Palace to gamble all the time because he thinks the odds are better.”

A microsecond later, Misty was out on the patio, making her phone call.

“So you love me, huh?” Wilbur said playfully.

“Yes, I do,” I said without hesitation or remorse. “And if I’m not mistaken, you love me too. Or was that just a ruse to get me out of bed?”

“Well that would be something different, saying that to get a woman
out
of bed. No, it’s true,” Wilbur insisted.

And even though I had the urge to say, “I’m not sure why,”
I didn’t. I was worth loving, even if I had felt unworthy most of life. Today was different. I was different. And I was going to let Wilbur love me as long as he would.

Misty came bouncing back in.

“Mike said to come right now.”

“Let’s go then,” I said.

So off we went.

And there we were: on the patio of a restaurant with the din of chatter and clanking
of dishes, with people—normal people, living normal lives—and I was going to be one of them.
Kind of.
I was going to be happy.

“So, I just want to let you know what happened last week,” I began before we ordered our food, feeling obligated to explain my odd behavior. “But first, I want to let you know, I’m going to get a job. Though I can’t exactly work at Las Vegas Memorial. Misty, I’m going to pay half the rent and utilities. I still have enough to pay you until I find work.”

“You don’t have…” Misty began.

I cut her off.

“I
do
have to. I need to. Wilbur, I want to spend some time with you, a few days at least, but after that I have to go back to Los Angeles to see my friend Jerry.”

“Jerry?” he asked, looking a little concerned.

“He’s my doctor.”

“Doctor? Does that mean…are you considering treatment?” Wilbur blurted, exited at the prospect that I might fight for my life.

“He’s my doctor, but he’s also my friend. I’ve left him completely in the dark. I feel terrible about it. But yes, it means I’m going to go see him, professionally. I’m not promising that I’m going to undergo whatever treatment he recommends, but I’m willing to hear them out—Jerry and the oncologist, I mean.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wilbur offered.

“I really need to go alone.”

Wilbur looked displeased with my decision, almost helpless, but he managed to say “All right” with no argument. God, I loved him.
He always said “All right.”

“There’ll come a time when some decisions will need to be made. I don’t want either one of you to have to make them, so I’m going to use whatever relatively healthy time I have left to arrange for my care when I’m unable to care for myself. And I’ve already decided on the disposition of my remains.”

“That sounds so cold,” Misty noted with a shiver.

I had always thought so as well. Shortly after someone dies in a hospital, the nurses are forced to shove forms into the faces of their mourning loved ones, including the Disposition of Remains. It was always a tragic struggle for family members, especially if the deceased hadn’t made prior arrangements or informed anyone of their wishes. Their family was left to guess.

“I know it sounds cold, but it’s just reality, and I have to face it. It can’t be put off.”

Wilbur was visibly upset. His eyes began to well. I had never witnessed a man cry who wasn’t about to hold his newborn baby or who hadn’t lost the remote. It was so foreign to me. Evan had never cried, not even close. Michael had become upset when I broke up with him, but it was more of anger response. He was too cocky to let anyone see him cry.

“Wilbur, I just want to you to know what you’re getting into.”

“I know, it’s just when you say it like that…”

I suddenly felt terrible again for putting him through everything that I was about to.

“I just want to say all the things we haven’t said. I want to be clear, and then we don’t have to talk about it again.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“All right, I understand,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

“In that case, I have a favor to ask. A big one.”

“Anything.”

“I’ve thought a lot about this…where I want to end up. When I was in Italy, I spent every
day with a nun named Sister Constance at the Church of Ognissanti. She agreed to place some of my ashes near the grave of Botticelli, who, as you know, is my favorite. But then, when I was in Africa, I came to the conclusion that I should donate my organs, since I am still fairly young. After that, when I was in Havasupai, I met my aunt, and learned all about the place where my family came from. I felt like it was my true home—the one I should return to.”

“Aunt…who?” Wilbur asked.

“Irma. She’s my mother’s sister.”

“What? Really? That’s incredible! I had no idea.”

“So, I know it will be complicated, but I want all three. I want to donate what organs are viable, then I want the rest of me to be cremated and divided between the two places: the Ognissanti and Havasu Falls.”

“I’m sorry…” Wilbur said as he excused himself from the table.

“This is hard for him to hear,” Misty muttered.

“It’s hard for me to say. I want to be with him, but the reality is, it won’t be forever. I want to be clear; I don’t want to leave anything to chance. Will you do it Misty? If he can’t?”

“I will, but give him some time. I think he’ll surprise you.”

Misty and I watched from
our amazing vantage point as the Bellagio water show started dancing, with its twelve thousand jets spraying water up to five hundred feet in the air amidst the lights and fog to the score of “Time To Say Goodbye.” It brought me back once again to that perfect moment atop the Piazzale Michelangelo. Wilbur returned and sat back down at the table, but not before giving my shoulders a reassuring rub—making that moment perfect as well.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he whispered into my ear.

I was done being bossy for the evening and we never discussed it again, ever. Luckily, Wilbur has a very good memory.

As the music came to a dramatic climax and the water jets sank back into the waterline of the enormous man-made lake, Wilbur turned his attention back to me.

“You never told us why you can’t work at Las Vegas Memorial.”

“Oh, right. Because my father works there.”

“Say what?” Misty cried with a spit-take of her cocktail. “I thought your father was dead!”

“So did I.”

I told them the whole story of how my parents had met and the scandalous nature of their relationship. How my father had tricked the Havasupai people, but my mother had run off with him anyway. How she’d hidden him from me, and how he’d bolted at the sight of me.

Wilbur just put his arm around me, but for once I didn’t need to be comforted. I was all right with it. I was all right with everything.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Misty said gently.

Was it true? Was there some genuine cosmic honesty to that statement? I guess if a woman who had lost her husband and child could feel that way, there must be some truth to it. But I was done searching for reasons. The reasons didn’t matter; the reality of the situation was all that mattered to me.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening on the patio with mostly lighthearted non-death-related conversation
,
after I’d explained the events that led me to confront Alexander Misalov, and how he denied me. I realized that it was silly to mourn the loss of a father I’d never really had anyway.

Afterward, the three of us went for a warm-evening walk in the desert
air. I had felt next to death for a week, and even though I had spent the majority of the night discussing my impending death, I was still alive. That, and having such good friends, was something to be happy about.

We returned to Misty’s place to discover a shadowy figure sitting on her porch. After I’d grasped that the form was much too tall to be Evan, I panicked that I was seeing the apparition of my grandfather while fully conscious. As we approached, his body language became more reminiscent of Michael, how he had waited for me in front of the hostel in Florence. But it wasn’t Michael this time. My heart began to pound as I realized that it was
Alexander Misalov.

The perfect end to the perfect evening was shattered. I had already fantasized how the rest of the night would go. It involved kissing, sweating, and nudity, not my estranged, would-be
dad lurking on the doorstep.

“Wait,” I urged Wilbur as I grabbed hold of his arm. “That’s him. That’s my father.”

I pushed my way in front of Misty and Wilbur. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted.

Alexander stood as I approached him.

“Hello again,” he said hesitantly.

“Hello,” I replied, trying to remain calm and unaffected. “How did you find me?”

“From your application at the hospital,” he admitted. “I want to apologize, Anastasia. You caught me by surprise, but I shouldn’t have left that way.”

“All right,” I shrugged.

I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

“May I take you to dinner?”

“I just came from dinner. Why don’t we just talk here?” I suggested as I waived Misty and Wilbur over.

“You guys go inside; I’ll only be a minute.”

I could see the look of concern on Wilbur’s face, but he did as I asked. I was really not in the mood to deal with this man. I had made up my mind to excise him from my memory, and I didn’t want him to spoil my newfound strength. Despite this, I sat down on the porch, and he took a seat next to me.

“I don’t know where to start, Anastasia.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

“Yes, very well. When I was an intern at the University, I was sent to Havasupai to collect blood samples for some research they were doing. I fell in love with the place, and that’s where I met your mother. She was so beautiful; I’d never seen anyone like her. I had just moved to the United States…with my wife. I tried to resist your mother, but our connection was so strong, and we began an affair. I left Havasupai to ask my wife for a divorce, and I planned to return for Nova.
”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. When I went home, my wife informed me that she was pregnant. I couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone and pregnant in a country that was foreign to her. She hadn’t done anything wrong.”

I had so many questions, but I thought back to what one of my evil nursing instructors used to say:
“Save your questions for the end, because I’ll probably answer them before you ask.”

“I went back to Havasupai to tell Nova that I couldn’t be with her, but the other Natives wouldn’t allow me on the reservation. They thought I had tricked them into some research that was against their beliefs.”

“Had you?”

“No, I was merely the phlebotomist—the person who drew
their blood.”

“I know what a phlebotomist is.”

“Right, sorry. I had no idea what the University was doing. I was told we were doing research on diabetes. I have been contacted occasionally over the years by some of the Havasupai. Some still want retribution. That’s what I thought you came to my office for. I didn’t put it all together until later.”

“You thought I was part of the angry mob?”

“Yes, then when you mentioned Nova…”

He took a moment to catch his breath before shaking himself back to his story.

“Since I couldn’t see Nova face to face when I went back to Havasupai, I sent her a letter instead…but received no reply. A few months later, Nova showed up at the University. She had left the canyon and hitchhiked to Las Vegas. She’d never received my letter.”

“O
kay, so then what?”

“I left work for the
day. I checked Nova into a hotel room, then explained to her why I hadn’t gone back. She was furious and crying. I didn’t know what to do. I was in love with her, but it just couldn’t be. Things were so different then. No hospital would have hired me; no one would go see a doctor who would leave his pregnant wife for another woman. I told Nova that she should go back to Havasupai, but she said she couldn’t go back, that she had dishonored herself and couldn’t face her people. Then she told me to get out.”

“Did you?”

“I tried to tell her that I would drive her back. I would take the blame. I would do whatever it took to make the situation right. But she just became angrier. She began to hit me and throw things at me. She told me that she never wanted to see me again. So I left. Your mother, she was very…tempestuous.”

“Yes, I’m well aware. Let me guess: The hotel you took her to, was it the Imperial Palace?”

“How did you know?”

“Because she always told me it was her favorite place. I don’t really understand it from that story though.”

This became the second time in one day that I watched a grown man cry. He continued his story through his tears. I was tempted to put my arm around him. I actually felt sorry for this man who had ignored me my whole life.

“About a year later, I went to the Imperial Palace for a medical conference, after which I decided to try my hand at poker. Then I saw her; she was a cocktail waitress there. I should have just turned and walked away. I thought in my mind that she had surely come to her senses and gone back to her people. But, she had stuck to her word; she really was too ashamed to go back.

“She suggested that we get a hotel room. I knew it was a bad idea but I couldn’t resist her, I loved her so much. We made love. She thought I had come back for her.”

“But you hadn’t.”

“No. Shortly after my daughter was born, my wife was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. It was very aggressive. My situation had become even more…unleaveable.

She said that she loved me and that she would take me any way she could get me, so we began to meet at the hotel whenever I could get away.”

“So why did you never come to see me? Did you know that she told me you were dead?”

A look of shock came over his face.

“No, I didn’t. I also didn’t know about
you
at all.”

“How could she hide something like that?”

“I saw by the birth date you put on your application that you are thirty-eight, yes?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded his head.

“I thought as much. She must have been pregnant already when she came to Las Vegas. She had you during the period of time she had pushed me out of her life. She probably knew that if she told me about you, I would have insisted on seeing you. But, knowing her like I did, she was ashamed of our relationship. She didn’t want you to know that I was a married man. But it’s important to me that you understand: I’
m not proud of how I behaved.”

“Where were you when she was sick? And when she died?”

“One night, in our usual hotel room, Nova told me she had met someone and she couldn’t see me anymore. I was heartbroken, but what could I say? I had a wife and I thought that Nova deserved to be happy, so I let her go. It wasn’t until years later that I tried to track her down again at the Imperial Palace. I just had to see her. I was told by someone there that she had died. It was the most devastating day of my life.”

“There was never anyone else…at least that I know of,” I said, trying to comfort him.

But I quickly realized that there also wasn’t anyone my mother hadn’t lied to.

“The last time I saw her, she told me that she wanted me to remember her the way she was when I first met her: with youth and beauty. I didn’t understand why she said that until later. She obviously
—hadn’t wanted me to see her sick.”

“She lied to both of us,” I said, sickened by the whole thing.

But it all made sense. She’d created this fairytale life for me. In her mind, she was the dutiful nurse married to the handsome doctor. She wanted her daughter to be a nurse, marry a doctor or a lawyer, and have the life she’d only dreamed of.

“Don’t be angry with her; she was trying to protect you.”

“When I was teenager I thought she went to the Imperial Palace all the time because she had a gambling problem. It’s turns out she had a
you
problem.”

And with that, I started to laugh. Alexander laughed along with me.

“I don’t think your mother ever gambled,” he managed.

I shook my head. I knew almost nothing about the woman who
had raised me.

“Your other
daughter, what’s her name?” I asked.

“Before I reveal that to you, I want to tell you a story.”

“Okay,” I answered, wondering how many more stories there possibly could be.

“When I met your mother on the reservation, we would sit for hours by the waterfall and she would tell me the legends of her people. One time, she asked me to tell her a legend of my people. I told her the only one I knew:

“In the early 1900s, Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia, was celebrating more than three hundred years of the Romanov Dynasty. He had a wife and five children. His youngest, the only boy, suffered from hemophilia, and his parents were told that he would soon die.

“Alexandra, the
Empress, sought out the help of a peasant faith healer named Rasputin. Alexandra soon began to cherish his advice and company. She believed Rasputin had done wonders for her son’s health. But Rasputin had gained privileges in the Czar’s household that many considered improper, even becoming a political advisor to the Czar. He was thought by most to be a charlatan. He was an alcoholic, and many accused him of crimes of a sexual nature.

“As war began to break out in Russia, the
Czar feared for his reputation and had Rasputin exiled from Saint Petersburg. Rasputin sent a letter to the Czar, saying that he felt he would be murdered, and he’d had a vision that if he were murdered by a Romanov, the Czar’s entire family would be executed within two years. His curse. Many sought to end Rasputin’s life, but he proved extremely difficult to kill. He had been previously stabbed and had survived. On the night he was murdered, he was poisoned, shot four times, and beaten before he was finally tied up and drowned in an icy river…by a man who was married to the Czar’s niece, and, therefore, a Romanov.

“The
Czar abdicated his throne, and the family was held under house arrest in Siberia. On July 17, 1918, a little more than a year and a half after Rasputin was murdered, the Czar’s entire family was executed by the Bolshevik secret police, just as Rasputin had cursed. All had been murdered but one. Legend has it that one of the daughters, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, a lively and vivacious girl, escaped. She somehow snuck out, evading the onslaught. Her body wasn’t found with the others.

“In the years that followed, many women came forward claiming to be the lost duchess, but they all turned out to be imposters. No one knew for sure what had become of her. But she had been raised to cook and clean and sew. The legend is that she lived happily amongst the people as a commoner, never revealing that she was royalty.”

He told the story just as my mother had.

“I’m familiar with the story; I’ve heard it a million times. But they found Anastasia in a ditch in Siberia a few years back.”

“It’s a legend,” he retorted in frustration.

“What does any of it have to do with your
daughter?”

“Your mother loved that story. So when my
daughter—your sister—was born, I named her Anastasia, as a tribute to Nova.”

“That’s so creepy!” I cried, bypassing my mental filter. “Did my mother know?”

“I don’t see how she could have. I was very careful never to discuss my home life with Nova; it upset her greatly. My other daughter, she is also thirty-eight. We call her Ana.”

“Well, that’s a relief. People call me ‘Stacia.’”

“I would have come to see you sooner, but I wanted to tell Ana first. She was quite upset. Her mother died just a few years ago. I felt like it was punishment for my wrongdoing, to have both of the women I loved die so young. I did love my wife, just not the way I loved your mother. But now I have you in my life, maybe my curse is broken.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him,
“Oh by the way, I’m dying too.”

“It was very difficult for me to hurt Ana like that, by telling her the truth, but she is no
more my daughter than you are. I feel that the lies must come to an end. She said she would like to meet you…eventually.”

My head felt as though it were about to explode. I couldn’t hear anymore. I needed some time to process everything. I think it would have been easier if Alexander were some kind of monster. But I understood him. I could see why my mother loved him. He had a soft, kind face, and a soothing voice. He had cheated on his spouse, but who was I to judge? I had stayed married for all the wrong reasons. And who knows—had I met Wilbur while I was still living with Evan, would I still have fallen in love with him? The answer was probably
yes.

“I hope that you and I can have a relationship. You are the part of Nova that didn’t die, and I would like to get to know you, Stacia.”

“I’d like that,” I replied, biting my tongue.

I went to shake his hand, but he hugged me instead
.

When he released me, he began to walk away, turning back just long enough to call out, “Oh, you got the job.”