Secret for a Song (8 page)

W
e
went to thirteen different stores up and down that block and twelve on the next
block before Drew’s balance got so bad he began to walk
into
people
instead of around them. So we stopped.

“I’ll
bring the car around,” I said, as he sat down on the stoop of a clothing store.
“You stay right here.”

“Oh
no, I think I’m going to run away.” I glanced at him to see if he was mad, but
he wore a grin about a half mile wide on his face. “Smile, Grayson,” he said.
“What’s the point of life if you can’t be a little sarcastic?”

I
shook my head and took off for the parking garage.

When
I pulled up beside him, Drew started to stand up, wobbled a little, and fell
back down. He grabbed on to the stair railing to pull himself up, his jaw hard,
face closed off. I put the gearshift into park and ran around the car. People
gave him a wide berth as they walked right past where he lay sprawled on the
sidewalk, as if they couldn’t see that something was wrong. When they were past
him, they turned to gawk.

I
put a hand around his bicep and helped him stand, seething at the audacity of
the passers-by.

But
Drew didn’t seem too bothered by it. “Thanks. Someone took my legs and filled
them up with Jell-o.”

He
leaned heavily on me as I led him to the car, and I was a little afraid we
might both slip on the snow and ice and fall, but we made it. I turned on the
heat as we pulled away from the curb and into traffic.

My
head felt a little foggy. I blinked hard, then glanced at Drew. “Are you all
right?”

He
shrugged. I could see how hard he was trying to downplay what I’d seen—the
naked, ugly truth in the glaring daylight, the unvarnished part of living with
a progressive disease. “All right and upright,” he said, grinning suddenly.

I
wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to do that. I didn’t need to see him with
a mask on, the painted-on overbright twinkle in his eye with a smile to match.
I’d worn that mask before, many times. The back of it was contoured to the
lines and planes of my face. But I didn’t know how to say any of that. So I
said nothing.

We
drove in silence for a few minutes. My eyes started to burn.

“You
okay?” he asked. I could see him staring at the side of my face. “You’re
shivering.”

I
knew what was going on. My fever was back now that the ibuprofen had worn off.
I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, and it was past four o’clock. I tried not
to smile in spite of the lightness in my chest, a helium balloon expanding.

“I’m
fine.”

“But—”

“Really.”
I heard him sigh, a defeated sound. “So. Where to next? Or do you want me to
take you home? I can go drop the car off at Zee’s, too.”

Drew
got the petition papers out of his bag and looked at them as we drove. “If you
don’t mind, I’d like to visit Jack. I think you’ll like him.”

There
was a voice of reason in the back of my mind of which I was aware. It said this
was crazy, that this couldn’t go anywhere good. Drew and my friendship—or
whatever this was, maybe a semi-flirtation—was based on a very obvious lie.

I
didn’t have MS. I wouldn’t be getting sicker. There were people he could run
into at any time who could tell him the truth. Linda Adams or Shelly at the
hospital. My mother or father. Dr. Stone, my therapist.

But
if it was the voice of reason that attempted to prod me back in line, there was
another, more insidious voice that was much more pleasant to listen to. That voice
of madness sang of other, more compelling things. It insisted that the chance
of Drew running into any of those people was slim. Its whispers caressed the
soft shell of my ear. Don’t you
like
Drew? it asked. What harm are you
doing, really? The man’s funny, and smart, and talented, and he wants to spend
time with you. Come on, Saylor. There’s always tomorrow for goodbye.

Maybe
I was a hateful person for listening so intently to that second voice. But the
pull I felt toward Drew, it was indescribable. The only time I’d experienced
anything like it was with my syringe or the laxatives or the myriad other ways
I’d made myself sick. I didn’t know what exactly it was about him; maybe just the
fact that he had a fuller life than I’d ever had in spite of having FA. Maybe I
wanted to know what it was about me that he seemed to like so much.
There’s
something about you, Grayson,
he’d said. I wanted to find out what he meant
by that. It couldn’t just be my supposed MS, could it?

“Sure,”
I replied. “I’d love to meet Jack.”

My
cell phone rang. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled it out: Dr. Stone.

“You
can answer it,” Drew said. “I don’t mind.”

“No,
that’s okay. Um, they can leave a message, I guess.”

He
leaned over and glanced at the screen. “It says Dr. someone, doesn’t it? You
should definitely take it. Doctors can rarely ever be reached, believe me. And
if he’s calling you on a Saturday, it must be his dedicated day to return
patient phone calls.”

I
didn’t have time to argue or think the situation through, not without Drew
realizing something weird was going on, so I answered. “Hello?”

“Saylor?
This is Dr. Stone.”

“Um,
hi.”

“How
are you?”

“Fine.”
I glanced at Drew out the corner of my eye, but he was looking straight ahead.

“I
wanted to see how your time volunteering at the hospital’s been. Linda Adams
told me she’d met with you and everything seemed to be in order.”

“Oh,
yeah. It’s, um, it’s been great. Everything’s working out.”

“That’s
heartening to hear. Would you like to make an appointment for Monday to come
speak with me? I have an opening at nine o’clock.”

“Yeah,
sure. That sounds good.”

“Alright.
I’ll see you Monday morning.”

“Bye.”

I
hung up and stuck the phone back in my pocket. “Got an appointment.”

“Good.
Is that your MS doctor?”

“Yeah.”
I tried to think of something smarter or wittier to say, but my heart was still
pounding from what Drew might have overheard. He’d say something if he’d heard that
part about volunteering at the hospital...right?

It
felt like we sat there listening to the car’s monotonous highway humming for
way too long. But finally, Drew spoke.

“It
gets easier, you know,” he said. “The longer you know your doctors, the less
they seem like machines. Eventually you’ll come to see them as the humanoids
they are.”

I
forced a laugh. “That’s a relief.”

We
drove the rest of the way in silence.

J
ack
Phillips lived in a middle class neighborhood with Victorian style homes and
cheap vinyl siding. I pulled up behind a white Ford Focus in the driveway and
turned off Zee’s car. My hands were sweating; I wiped them on my jeans, hoping
Drew was too busy getting out of the car to notice. What the hell was I doing
here? Was I seriously going into a sick, dying guy’s house under the pretense
of being ill like him? I’d done a lot of fucked up things in my life, but I was
still sane enough to realize that this was a first, even for me.

Drew
waved at me from outside the car, a sort of, “Let’s get going” gesture. It was
too late to back out now. It’d raise too many questions. Besides, there was a
small part of me that thought,
I’m not here to laugh at or belittle them.
I was there because I wanted to
be
like them, because I worshipped the
mutation in their genes, the stumble and stutter of their limbs. Wasn’t
imitation the highest form of flattery?

I
got out of the car. “Sorry. Just had to check something.”

At
the door, Drew knocked and stood back. “Jack’s parents take care of him.”

I
nodded, not sure why he said that. Later I realized it was because he wanted to
prepare me, in some small way. “Jack’s parents take care of him” was code for
what I was about to witness. Though Drew didn’t know I was a complete liar, he
did know that I was relatively new to the world of terminal illness.

The
woman who opened the door was short and fat, her dirty blonde hair greasy and
graying at the roots. “Drew, honey. Hi.” Her face broke into a genuine smile,
and she reached up to hug him before stepping aside. “Come in, come in. He’ll
be so happy to see you.”

She
seemed to notice me once I was inside. We smiled at each other tentatively,
waiting for Drew to make the introductions, for us to know each other.

“This
is Saylor,” Drew said, extending his hand out toward me. “She’s new to TIDD.
She actually helped me get our first signatures on the petition today.”

“Oh.
Oh, I see.” Jack’s mom came forward, and took my hand between both of hers. “Thank
you for doing that. I’m Jeannie, Jack’s mom. You have no idea how much that
means to me.”

“Uh,
you’re welcome,” I said, that feeling of guilt and self-revulsion bubbling up
in my chest like some sort of bile. “You really don’t have to—um, Drew did it all.
I was just along for moral support.”

Jeannie
stepped away and patted Drew on his lower back. “Well, I know Drew’s a
sweetheart. Always has been, since Jack getting diagnosed seven months ago.”

Seven
months? That was it? Seven short months since the dude had been diagnosed and
already he was sick enough to want to die? And here I was, clinging to the
parapet of life, not quite ready to let go, but not quite ready to clamber on
and live it, either.

“So
where is the big guy?” Drew asked. I had a hard time imagining any man Drew
would consider “big,” let alone a sick and dying one. “In his room?”

“Resting,”
Jeannie said, the smile slipping off her face. “He’s been resting a lot lately.
He’s just so tired.”

By
the look on Drew’s face, I could tell this wasn’t good news. Not that I
couldn’t guess that on my own.

We
made our way down a narrow hallway into a bedroom that wasn’t any more than ten
feet by ten feet. It was dominated by a hospital bed that was bordered on the
side closest to me by a chair for visitors, and on the others by a wheelchair, a
giant tank of oxygen, and some other IV drips and machines that I had no idea
what to make of.

The
boy lying in the bed was easily as tall as Drew, if not taller, but he couldn’t
have weighed more than me—about one hundred and thirty pounds. His skin was the
color and consistency of wax, and his bald head reminded me of that kid Carson
I’d met at TIDD. I couldn’t see much of his face because it was dominated by
what must’ve been an oxygen mask, though it looked different from the ones I’d
seen on TV. I had a vague recollection of it being some sort of medicine
dispenser, one I’d seen in a medical catalog once.

Jeannie
stepped up to him and caressed his cheek. “Hey, Jackie. Look who’s here to see
you, son.”

His
pale, veined eyelids fluttered open and he looked at his mother’s face blandly.
Then his eyes roved over to Drew and I saw a small spark of happiness. He
motioned weakly to his face mask, and Jeannie pulled it off, swiftly replacing
it in a series of magician-like coordinated moves with a nasal cannula. Once
the little buds of the tube were in his nostrils, Jack fumbled for the switch
by his bed that’d raise him up to a better level for conversing.

But
Drew held up his hand. “Don’t worry about that, man,” he said. “I can talk to
you just fine how you are.”

Jack
dropped his hand down, apparently grateful. Every movement of his reeked of
deep, deep exhaustion, the kind I was keenly aware that I’d never experienced.

“How’s
it going?” he asked, his voice raspy.

Drew
sank into the chair next to Jack’s bed. At first I was confused about what the chair
leg was touching. It looked like a yellow plastic bag. Then, with a whoosh of
realization, it came to me. It was a plastic bladder. Jack was catheterized, and
his urine was collected in this bag. I looked away.

“Look
what I got,” Drew said, handing the petition to Jack. “It’s not much yet, but
we’ll have a lot more signatures soon, man. I guarantee you.”

With
some effort, Jack held the papers up and looked at them. “Thanks,” he said.
Then, looking at me, “Who’s the hot chick?”

I
noticed Drew’s brief look of disappointment at Jack’s lack of enthusiasm,
though he covered it up so quickly I had to wonder if I’d imagined it. “This is
Saylor,” he said. “Saylor Grayson, meet Jack Phillips.”

I
waved in a sort of awkward little circle. “Hey. Heard a lot about you.”

“Have
you...” Jack began, and then exploded into a series of coughs, dry and
crackling. Jeannie came back into the room but he waved off her help. When she
was gone, he looked at me as if nothing had happened. “Have you heard my phone
number? It’s even better.”

Drew
burst out in guffaws that sounded only a little bit forced and I obliged with a
small laugh. I wondered if this was really happening.

After
some idle chatter, Jack raised up his bed and Drew and he played a video game
for a little while. They asked if I’d like to play, but I declined. I’d never
been one for video games, and anyway, the longer I stayed in Jack’s house, the
guiltier I felt. I wanted to engage with him as little as possible.

Finally,
when Jack fell asleep mid-round, Drew looked at me. “We should go,” he said. “Take
Zee’s car back.”

O
utside,
I watched as Drew’s breath and mine mingled in a misty tangle. It wasn’t
actively snowing, but the clouds were brooding and low, and I could smell it in
the air.

When
we got in the car, I blasted the heat at full. “You know, he doesn’t seem so
out of it.”

Drew
looked at me askance.

“I
mean, Zee said she didn’t like the idea of physician assisted suicide for Jack
because the cancer had affected his brain. But he didn’t seem...off to me at
all.” I began to back out of the Phillips’s driveway.

“Yeah.
He was having a pretty good day today.”

“Really?
So that wasn’t normal?”

Drew
made a “meh” face. “It’s not like he’s usually a rage machine or anything, but his
personality goes through this intense change. At the beginning, when I first
met him, he was really easygoing and happy, in spite of his diagnosis. When he
has his bad days, you can’t see any of that Jack anymore. I guess that’s what
Zee was talking about.” He paused. “But see, when he’s alert and mostly with it
like he was today, he still says he wants to have a choice in when he goes and
how he goes. That’s what makes me fight for his right to die.”

We
were quiet for a moment, and then Drew reached inside the zippered compartment
of his messenger bag. “Mind if I put this on?”

I
glanced at his hand and saw a Carousel Mayhem CD. Smiling, I waved toward the
stereo. “Go for it.”

“I
knew you had good taste in there somewhere,” he said. “You know, buried under
the Carly Rae Jepsen stuff.”

As
I laughed and turned to mock-glare at him, I noticed his fingers reaching to
feed the CD into the drive. But instead of lining the disc up with the opening,
Drew kept smashing it against the part of the dashboard that held the dials for
the heat.

Thinking
he was being goofy, I chuckled. “What are you doing?”

But
he didn’t answer. When I looked up at him, his eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw
hard. He let his hand go limp against the gear shift. “Would you mind doing it
for me? Please?” I had to strain to hear his voice; it was barely audible
against the whoosh of the heater.

I
took the CD. “Um, sure. No problem.” I stuffed it in without incident and the
music began to play. When I plucked up the courage to look at Drew again, five
minutes later, he was asleep. His head lolled against the headrest, his lips
parted as if in a sigh. There was something upsettingly, terribly vulnerable
about him in that moment. He reminded me of a five-year-old, spent after
pitching a tantrum and not getting what he wanted. Of course, if Drew had
pitched a tantrum, it had been internal, a silent raging. No wonder he was
exhausted.

When
I pulled into Zee’s driveway, I wasn’t feeling well at all. My body hurt all
over, and I knew my fever had to be creeping higher. Drew stirred in his seat.
I didn’t have the nerve to check on my abscess when he might wake up any moment,
though my fingers tingled with the need to pull down the neckline of my sweater.
I turned the CD off and his eyes fluttered open.

“Tired?”
I asked.

He
didn’t answer me, his mood still ruined from what had happened with the CD
player earlier.

“We’re
here,” I said.

He
pushed the eject button on the stereo, and grabbed his CD—this time without any
problems—when the thing spit it out. Opening the car door, he used his cane to
get out and stretched his legs in the snow-pregnant evening.

I
followed him out.

The
woman who answered the door was thin and bespectacled, with a head full of
crazy dark curls that stuck out every which way. I felt a pang of sympathy. I’d
thought my loose curls were bad, but hers were the tightly-wound, kinky kind
I’d always been secretly thankful I’d been spared.

She
smiled when she saw Drew and me. “Hi. You must be Saylor. Zee’s told me all
about you. I’m Lenore, her mom. Thank you for getting her home safely the other
night. Come in, you two, get out of the cold.”

We
followed her in, Drew dragging behind me. Zee was propped up on the living room
couch, watching a re-run of Santa Barbara, a soap opera with dramatic women
with big hair I remembered my mum watching when I was much younger.

“How’re
you feeling?” I asked.

She
rolled her eyes. “Fine, though Mom won’t let me so much as go take a leak
without badgering me about it.”

“Language,”
her mother warned, but without much mettle. “And if you didn’t want me
badgering you, you shouldn’t have danced till you almost passed out.”

“Mooooom.”
Zee threw her head back against the couch pillow, but I could see she didn’t
mind too much.

Her
mother picked up a batch of laundry she’d been folding. “All right, all right.
I’ll let you visit with your friends. Holler if you need me.” And with a quick
pat on my arm, she bustled out.

I
sat next to Zee on the couch and Drew took the chair next to me. “You look
better than the last time we saw you,” he said.

“Just
needed to get on my oxygen for the night,” she replied. “It was still worth it,
though. Pierce is a hell of a dancer. Tell ya, if he wasn’t gay, I’d be all
over that like white on rice.”

“Too
much information,” Drew said, but his voice was limper than usual.

I
chuckled and let my head fall against the back of the couch. My eyes closed
without me asking them to.

“Are
you okay?”

I
forced them open again and found that Zee was staring at me. “Yeah. Fine.”

“She’s
been sort of out of it since we left downtown,” Drew said. “Won’t say anything
to me, though.”

“You
look like you might have a fever. I’d hold my hand up to your forehead, but my
hands are always cold now,” Zee said. “Drew. You do it.”

I
felt my face heat up even more, and not from my fever. He bent over to me and
put the back of his enormous hand against my forehead. “Yeah, I’ll say that’s a
fever,” he said. His breath smelled like mint. “She needs some ibuprofen.”

“Mom!”
Zee yelled, looking toward the doorway where her mom had disappeared minutes
before.

“No,
really, don’t wor—”

“MOM!”

“What?
What is it?” Her mother came bustling back in, her face creased with worry.
“Are you okay? What do you need?”

“Do
we have any ibuprofen for Saylor? She’s got a fever.”

“No,
really, it’s okay,” I said again. I tried to lift my head off the couch, but it
felt like it was filled with lead. And it was beginning to hurt, as if it was
made from little splinters of glass.

“You
don’t look so great, honey,” Lenore said. “Here, let me take your temperature.”

I
closed my eyes and opened my mouth when I felt the cold nib of the thermometer
touch my bottom lip. When it beeped, someone took it out of my mouth.

“101.5,”
I heard Lenore say. “Do you need to go to the ER, Saylor?”

Uh
oh. No. No ER. They were familiar with me, and I couldn’t risk Drew or Zee
finding out. “No, I’m fine. Just need to rest, I think. I have an appointment
with my doctor on Monday.” The lie slipped out easily, without much conscious
thought on my part. It was as if my survival instincts kicked in, which, if you
thought about it, said a lot about the kind of person I was.

“Okay.
Well, here’s some Motrin for you then.”

I
took the pills from Lenore and swallowed them with a cup of water she brought
me.

“Here’s
a blanket too,” she said, spreading out a chenille throw over my knees. “You
just let me know if you need something else, okay? Would you like me to drive
you home?”

I
smiled. “No, thank you.”

“Mom,
you’re hovering,” Zee said.

“I
don’t mind,” I replied, thinking, If only you knew. To Lenore: “I promise I’ll
let you know if I need anything.”

“All
right, hon.” She squeezed my hand gently, refilled my water cup, and left us
alone.

There
was silence for a full minute, and I kept my eyes closed. I wanted to open
them, to see what Drew and Zee were up to, but I could’ve sworn someone came
along and pinned fifty-pound dumbbells to my eyelids.

“So,
how’d the petition thing go?” Zee asked.

“Really
well. We hit about twenty-five shops today. Saylor was a rockstar.”

“You
walked
to twenty-five stores? How did your legs do?”

Just
the slightest breath of a pause. “Fine. No issues.”

I
opened my eyes then, just a slit, to stare at Drew’s face as he said it. I
believed there were things you could tell about a person by looking at his face
mid-lie that you might not be able to tell after ten years of friendship.
Drew’s face was impassive for the most part, but the tips of his ears were
fuchsia. Not as calm as he wanted to portray after all. I thought about him
sprawled on the sidewalk as people passed him; fumbling with the CD in Zee’s
car.

I
started to say something when I realized with a great big stab of horror that I
was going to throw up before a word ever left my mouth. At least I had time to
lean forward, so the mess went on the floor and not on Lenore’s Laura
Ashley-like floral couch.

“Mom!”
Zee yelled, and Lenore came back. When she saw what had happened, she made an
about-face, only to return armed with industrial-strength cleaners and a mop
and bucket.

“All
right, I’m taking you home,” Drew said, hooking his arm around my shoulder. I
tried to stand up, my legs weak and rubbery. I knew I couldn’t lean on him too
much—he couldn’t handle my weight
and
his. But I let him think he was
doing much of the work anyway.

“I’m
so sorry,” I said, the veil of fever making my mortification just a little less
mortifying.

“Don’t
worry, honey,” Lenore replied. “You just concentrate on feeling better.”

“Yeah,
seriously. I’ll text you later,” Zee said. “And take my car. I’m not going to
be driving anywhere anytime soon. I’ll get it from you tomorrow.”

I
nodded and Drew and I shuffled out.