Russian Tattoo (25 page)

A young woman gets up from her desk with a phone and walks to where we are sitting. “Your flight is ready, sir,” she says and points to the door that opens onto the airfield. We walk outside, into the December wind and the fumes of Route 17, where a tanned, uniformed pilot next to a small plane, as experienced and dependable as any pilot in any magazine ad, greets Frankie and shakes his hand.

We say good-bye and embrace. I think of my father, of the last time I saw him being carried to the waiting taxi that took him to the hospital, but I shake off all these thoughts and hold Frankie in my arms a moment longer.

“He's in good hands,” says the pilot, and I smile and nod to confirm that I know.

Thirty-Eight

I
n May a second seizure catapults Frankie back north. We spend two weeks driving back and forth, first to his NYU oncologist and then to his surgeon, who suggests another operation. In his office, he taps on Frankie's knees, tells him to touch his nose, and makes him walk across the room.

“You're in very good shape, young man,” says the surgeon, who is in his sixties and has a paternal air about him. “Now go and tell my secretary I want her to schedule an operation as soon as she can find an opening.”

When Frankie is on the other side of the closed door, the doctor tells us he will remove as much of the tumor as he can get to, which will grant my brother-in-law a few more months. “It's not curable, no false hopes. You understand this, right?” he asks, his eyes stern, his fatherly demeanor vanished. Andy and I nod. We understand.

Behind her desk, the secretary, a young woman with a black ponytail and gold hoops swinging from her ears, drags her finger down a sheet with days partitioned into hours. “I can find a slot for you tomorrow, I'm almost sure of it,” she says, her consonants made more sibilant by her Spanish accent. “This person can be moved,” she mutters, “and I can call Mr. Jackson and see if he can make the same time next week. He'll be thrilled.” The badge on her lapel reads
aracely nunez
. She is efficient and focused, a twenty-five-year-old in charge of life.

We spend the summer sitting in our kitchen and drinking wine, despite the no alcohol sticker on the bottle of Frankie's steroids. Every few days his friends drive in to visit, and I throw together big dinners that make us move from the kitchen to the large table in the dining room. We carve into whole chickens and plow through salad bowls full of pasta; we dig into pots of boiled potatoes and strip lamb down to the bone. It almost feels like a never-­ending party.

During the day, I drive Frankie to local MRIs and then to NYU, where his oncologist squints at the film pinned up against the lighted screen and points out the encroaching swell of white. Andy and I and sometimes my mother-in-law, who seems to have shrunk even more in the past ten months, crowd around the screen, staring at the pale, expanding stain—an aggressive void, a sea of sickness in the middle of Frankie's brain. Artie remains in his chair, leaning down and staring at the floor, spared remembering why he is sitting in an oncologist's office because his mind has already begun to close the window into what he knew only the day before.

“Is it any better, Doctor?” Doris invariably asks, her voice high and thin, as if the words came not from her lips but from someone else's, someone whose eyes were able to hold more hope.

The neuro-oncologist, who has been trained to deal with such unanswerable questions, returns to the lighted screen and encloses the white blur in Frankie's brain between his palms, repeating what he already said a few minutes earlier, knowing that this is not what Frankie's parents are able to hear. I watch him stagger through the second presentation, wondering why anyone—with so many specialties in the medical field—would deliberately choose neuro-­oncology as his occupation.

Frankie, who sits in a chair in the corner of the room, is always undaunted by our intense peering. “It is what it is,” is all he ever says.

In September, another seizure quakes through Frankie's body.

“You call his doctor this time,” says Andy. “Please.” He sits on our bed, looking down at the floor, and I know that, from now on, I will be the one making these calls. Andy has been arranging surgeries and subsequent appointments, maintaining his brother's health insurance, talking to distracted clerks, keeping in touch with Frankie's friends scattered all over the area, all wanting to spend time with him—making calls, compiling lists—which may be the only way you can get through a year of watching your brother die.

I dial the NYU oncologist. It is Saturday, and when we get connected, I hear children's voices in the background, the sounds of a family event outdoors. I imagine them in a meadow full of flowers behind the house, the doctor's daughters in dresses from Laura Ashley, their arms extended like wings of small airplanes, sailing through the grass away from their father and then back. I imagine the doctor frowning at the ringing phone, an unwelcome intrusion that for a few minutes will divert his attention from this sunny afternoon, from life. I tell him about the seizure; I recite Frankie's medications from memory; I scribble down what the doctor says. I am the most distant relative, the only one in the family who can muster the composure to describe the new symptoms of paralyzed fingers, slow-paced speech, a weakened right arm. I am the only one who has the audacity to ask how long he has left.

After I hang up, I go to my brother-in-law's room and do what the doctor tells me. I fill a syringe with blood thinner, let out the air bubbles as my mother has taught me, and clumsily jab it into Frankie's stomach. He makes a joke, praising my injection skills, pretending it doesn't hurt.

Amy calls to say she is on Interstate 95, on her way from Florida to our house in New Jersey. She arrives radiant and fresh, as if she has just stepped out of the ocean instead of an old Toyota she drove for twelve hundred miles. We kiss and embrace; she is so reedy that hugging her feels like holding a birch tree.

Aren't you supposed to be in school? Andy asks.

Amy smiles, throwing back her head—Jen's blond hair, Frankie's green eyes—and shrugs. She informed her high school counselor she was going to go to New Jersey to take care of her father, she says, then simply got into Frankie's car and drove from Boca Raton to Ridgewood.

She runs into the house and into her father's arms. Frankie has moved from his bed into a chair to greet her, and they hold each other silently, his failing body sheltering her healthy one.

For the next few weeks, Amy helps with grocery shopping, makes elaborate salads, and drives to a local trattoria to pick up orders of the fried calamari Frankie loves. The steroids he takes have rounded his face and his middle, making him permanently hungry.

We rent a hospital bed, and the picture of those few weeks I hold in my mind is of Amy sitting by Frankie's side, feeding him the crispy golden rings.

This is when a rabbi, Frankie's friend of about five years, starts coming to the house. As we have found out since his diagnosis, my brother-in-law boasts a whole battalion of unexpected friends: waiters, short-order cooks, stewardesses, actors turned caterers, real estate agents who are part-time hairdressers, busboys with the skills of investment brokers, and now a rabbi.

The rabbi drives all the way from Monsey, where I imagine him presiding over a congregation of men dressed in black, women in wigs peering out from behind a curtain. He wears a black coat and a long beard, and when I offer him a drink of water on a ninety-­five-degree day, he politely declines.

“Where did you meet him?” Andy asks.

“In Aruba, of all places,” says Frankie. “I was catering a group of singles who wanted a kosher Passover with sun, and Rabbi Kaploon was my overseer. It's been a good gig for both of us ever since. We've even become friends.”

When the rabbi judiciously calls to say he is on his way to our house, Frankie orders Amy in an urgent voice to hide the calamari.

“Why should I hide the calamari?” Amy giggles, lifting another golden piece from a take-out tray.

From now on, “hide the calamari” means the rabbi is coming for a visit.

While they talk in Frankie's room, Andy and I go online and try to find the blog of the man who has survived glioblastoma for over a year and a half, the only website that offered a glimpse of hope on that dark day when Frankie suffered his first seizure. We punch in all the possible word combinations; we scroll up and down the screen. It's all inconsequential. The blog is gone.

Jen now calls the house every week from Florida to get a report on her husband's health. I tell her about our doctor visits and the MRIs, and she tells me that the airfares are still too expensive for her to travel north. She also cannot leave her part-time job that involves reading to patients in a local hospital. Her voice makes me want to materialize in her Boca Raton kitchen armed with a blunt object and club her. But I simply give her the report. Frankie's whole right arm now refuses to move, and I can see the frustration in his eyes when he has to search for words. He asks his friend the rabbi to teach him how to pray.