It's Okay to Laugh (22 page)

W
hen your dying husband wants pancakes, you get him some fucking pancakes. If ever there is a time to eat your feelings, this would be it, but I cannot. In part because I do not have much of an appetite, and in part because my doctor recently informed me that I can no longer enjoy foods that contain gluten, or in other words, that I can no longer enjoy any of the foods that I consider foods. “Nora,” Aaron said emphatically when I shared my diagnosis with him, “this might be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”

The diner is small—just a few tables and some stools at the counter, so small that Aaron and I are actually too big to sit there, though before my gluten issues, we would do it just for the chance to eat these pancakes, bigger than our heads, sizzling on a griddle that's older than the two of us combined. The lunch rush is over,
but a few wayward teens with Technicolor hair and safety pin earrings sit a few feet from us. Nobody, I realize, knows that Aaron is dying. It is our little secret. There are many reasons for people to explain why I am crying into my coffee. We could be getting a divorce or being evicted from our apartment or have an inkling that the $20,000 we sent to secure our million-dollar inheritance from a long-lost Nigerian uncle might not pan out.

Or maybe they do know that Aaron is eating the very last public meal of his life. It may not be as mysterious as I think it is. I'd taken the one handicapped parking spot, though our application was still finding its way through the bureaucracy of the DMV. There were already a few snowbanks, and to get Aaron from the car to the sidewalk, I'd had to squat down and lift him from the waist, like two figure skaters in a dry rehearsal. “Watch my nuts!” he'd yelled, resting his good arm on top of my head like this was a completely natural situation for any couple to be in.

“So,” Aaron asks me as he hands me the butter knife to cut his pancakes, “what do you want to do now? Should we go to Italy? Should we go to Brazil?”

There will be no trip to Italy or Brazil, but we talk about it anyway, one last little kindness in a sweet little lie.

“I just want to be here,” I say, “with you.”

WE'D STARTED THAT DAY IN
the same emergency room he'd been admitted to three years earlier. That first day, before brain cancer was even a part of our vocabulary, was like a field trip for us. We'd found it all so outrageous and fascinating: Why would they make Aaron stay in the hospital, just because he'd had a seizure? Didn't they know he was young and healthy? That we'd just moved in together, and weren't planning to tell my parents about the
cohabitation? I was only just beginning to shake off the hangover from the Halloween party he'd thrown on Saturday night, so I was having a particularly hard time keeping up with even normal conversations, let alone whatever medical nonsense the nurses were spouting whenever they stepped into our little space in the emergency room. Aaron had given me his phone that afternoon and told me to Instagram everything. I took a handsome photo of him as a modern-day FDR: his skinny legs in the nonslip socks they insist you wear, poking out from under the blanket on his lap as we wheelchaired him to his MRI. We didn't really know what an MRI was, just that he needed to get one, so that we could get home and get on with our lives, which for me meant chugging at least fifty more ounces of Gatorade and eating a cheeseburger on our couch while Aaron handed out the Halloween candy. I sat on Aaron's lap in the wheelchair while we waited for his name to be called, his thumb tracing little infinity signs on the small of my back, the way he did every time we touched. Next to us, there was an old man lying alone on a hospital bed, motionless except for the rise and fall of his chest and the occasional blink of his watery eyes.

We assumed he was first in line.

When it was Aaron's turn, I followed him right to the door of the room where what looked like a small spaceship was waiting for him. It took a team of people in various shades of pastel scrubs to get him all strapped in, and before they shut the door I could hear him calling my name. A small part of me, the part that wasn't thinking of quippy tweets and flirting with Aaron in the basement of a hospital, knew that we were in a Moment. That there would be Before this moment and After, and I tried to take in everything that I could, to reassemble for future contemplation. Like, for example, how he called out for me before they shut the door.

“Nora,” he called, raising his arm and gesturing with his forefinger as I stepped closer. “Take a picture for Instagram.”

WE'RE ER PROFESSIONALS NOW, SO
we arrived today prepared for a full day of bullshit: two laptops, two iPads, two iPhones, our own chargers for each device, a pile of fresh comic books for Aaron, San Pellegrino water, KIND bars, and Sour Patch Kids. Before the nurse has even pulled the curtain shut, I've pulled the folding chairs from their hanging spot on the wall and kicked off my shoes, putting my feet up on the foot of Aaron's hospital bed and blindly accepting the terms and conditions for the free hospital Wi-Fi, which probably means I've forfeited all rights to my internal organs in exchange for a snail's-pace crawl toward the information superhighway. There's no Instagram today—Aaron doesn't want his mother to worry about him (World's Best Son Award)—but we settle into our routine of finding funny tweets to read aloud to one another. I suck at this because I can't get through more than three words of anything Jenny Mollen writes without giggling like I'm in church and just heard somebody fart, but Aaron finds gem after gem, and we may as well be at home in bed except for the sound of a woman howling outside of our room, begging to be put into rehab, insisting she was ready to get clean. “That lady thinks she's done some shit?” Aaron sighed, staring at the ceiling. “She should try chemo. That's the really hard stuff.”

The ER doctor is
Grey's Anatomy
–level hot, the kind of tall, corn-fed good looks you really only see in Midwestern men. I have my suspicions, at first, that he is just pretending to be a doctor, some sort of hired eye candy the hospital sends to particularly tense situations just to add a little sexiness to the atmosphere. He listens carefully while Aaron describes his last seizure, and orders up an emergency MRI, bumping Aaron to the top of the list.

“Is it just me . . . ,” I say after Dr. McDreamy leaves the room.

“No, he's hot,” Aaron interjects, “but cool your jets, I'm not dead yet.”

This time, I don't follow Aaron in a wheelchair. They push him down there in his bed, just like that milky-eyed old man we'd seen three years ago. I wonder whatever became of that guy, though I think I know the answer.

JUST LAST NIGHT, I'D LEFT
Ralph in the care of my friend Evan while Aaron slept in our bedroom. I wanted to get a workout in, to sweat and move and take my mind off the fact that every day, my husband was slipping further and further away. I needed those deadlifts and snatches and kettlebell swings physically as much as I did mentally. The left side of Aaron's body was getting weaker and weaker. His left arm hung useless in a sling I bought for a couple dollars at CVS. His left leg was beginning to follow suit, dragging behind him and giving him the look of a very well-dressed zombie. He slept about twenty hours a day, and when I got home from work I'd grab his good hand like we were about to arm wrestle, hook my other arm under his armpit, and lift him up so he could hang out with us in the living room or the kitchen.

“Fucking pathetic,” he'd say.

“No, you're not,” I'd whisper, trying not to cry while we shuffled our way out of the bedroom.

“Not me!” he'd say. “You! You're still such a weakling! I weigh, like, thirty pounds and you can barely lift me!”

While I was up in the gym just working on my fitness, Aaron was having a violent seizure, crumbling to the floor in our living room while Evan served Ralph a second helping of macaroni and cheese. When Aaron woke, he insisted that Evan not call me at all. It would ruin my night, he insisted, I'd rush home instead of
finishing my workout. Like any good friend, Evan didn't call me, but when I texted him to see how things were going, he spilled the beans and I drove home feeling stupid and selfish for prioritizing my mom butt over my dying husband. I found Aaron in the bathroom, where he'd asked Evan to leave him.

“Hey, Nornia,” he said, smiling up at me from his slumped position against the bathtub, “how was your workout?”

He insisted he was fine, even after I cleaned him up and changed his clothes and put him to bed, his entire left side, from his face to his toes, almost completely paralyzed.

Aaron was not fine, but we told each other he was, just as we always had. I went downstairs to put in the laundry and called his doctor on the emergency line.

We affectionately referred to Aaron's oncologist as Dr. Mustache from day one. He has, as you may guess, facial hair that is downright Seussical, but that is the only whimsical thing about him. This man is a nerd, a brain tumor nerd, a man I like to imagine has one interest and one interest only: killing brain tumors. And, perhaps on weekends, building model train sets. If he's going to have an imaginary hobby, I want it to be something precise. Falconry would be a suitable alternative. Dr. Mustache has a collection of button-down shirts, each monogrammed with his initials. He speaks clearly and directly at every appointment, but to Aaron only, occasionally handing me a box of tissues in anticipation of bad news. It's nearly ten o'clock when I call him, and I imagine him in a clean, spare house somewhere on the south side of the city, perhaps eating a small bowl of cereal as a late-night snack. There is something about his voice—particularly its steady sternness—that gives me comfort, and makes me long for my father. I apologize for crying, and he tells me to wake up early tomorrow “or,
whenever you want, really,” and take Aaron to the ER. “I don't like this,” he tells me, “we need to see what's going on.”

“It isn't good,” I tell him.

“No,” he says, “it isn't.”

I WAS RIGHT, AND SO
was Dr. Mustache. An hour passes between when Aaron's MRI is over and when we actually see a doctor again. “Has anyone stopped in here yet? Like, a doctor?” the nurses ask repeatedly, and I remember this same dance from Halloween 2011, hours of waiting for the right person to deliver the news you don't want to hear. I hadn't been there when they'd told Aaron about his brain tumor. I had run home—to the bachelor pad of Aaron's that I'd just moved into—to grab the things you need for an unexpected night in the hospital: toothbrushes, pajamas, hoodies, basketball shorts, phone chargers, and warm socks. Our house had been filled with the evidence of the chaotic combination of our two lives. My mattress was still wedged into the kitchen, boxes of my books were stacked around the couch where a friend had crashed for the weekend, a pile of dirty dishes were half submerged in the cloudy water of our kitchen sink.

Where are you?
Aaron had texted me as our friend drove my car from the highway and toward Aaron's hospital bed.
There's something I need to tell you.

That's the thing about bad news: it wants to be told in person. Or, it usually does. My mother once sent me an email that read:

Subject: Your uncle

Is dead. Funeral soon. Call me?

The weight of Aaron's text sat with me on the long walk from the parking garage to his room, and when I walked into his room
an audience of friends and family looked at me with eyes filled with tears and pity.

“I have a brain tumor,” he said, gently tapping above his right eye, and I climbed right into his lap, disturbing cords and blankets until my forehead was pressed against his.

“They think it's small.”

“Your brain?”

“The tumor.”

“You'll be okay.

“I will, we will.”

DR. MUSTACHE IS NOT IN
today, but his nurse practitioner, a grandmotherly figure with the appearance of a Michael's craft store enthusiast and the brain of a neuro-oncology genius, is unusually quiet when she parts the curtain to our room and steps in, his social worker just a few steps behind her. They both clean their hands with the antibacterial foam at the doorway. Sure, it's a required habit for medical professionals, but it still strikes me as funny—like they have some germ that will kill Aaron faster than the cancer they're about to tell him is finally killing him. But it's habit, I'm sure, and also because you need to have something to do with your hands while you tell a person he is dying.

There is an art to the practice of telling a person that hospice is his only option. You may learn it from many years of motherhood as easily as you could through many years of an occupation dealing with death, but they've delivered this crushing news in a way that leaves Aaron and me feeling like this is a choice we've made, and not a death sentence we've been served.

“How do you feel?” his social worker, Margaret, asks him, and there is something about her, something so pure and good inside of her and her sweet voice, that we both begin to cry immediately,
which is something we don't typically do. But then again, neither is being told Aaron is going to die.

“I'm not afraid to die,” he tells her, “I just don't want to do it.”

ONCE AARON HAS FINISHED HIS
pancakes and I have finished my third cup of coffee, we go on with our lives. We pick up Ralph from day care, we feed him dinner, we watch a few hours of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and fall asleep holding hands.

I know for a fact that nobody cares about dreams but guess what? I'm going to tell you about a damn dream, okay? I dreamed my mother and I were caught in a flash flood that swept us up the street where I live, carrying us past parked cars and front yards that seemed untouched by the swell of water ripping down the street.