The Tragic Age (3 page)

“Hi, Billy,” she whispers.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is the most common type of leukemia in children.

“Mom and Dad say you're going to help me,” Dorie says.

A bone marrow transplant replaces diseased blood cells with healthy cells from a compatible donor. Fraternal or
dizygotic
twins are often but not always compatible. Apparently I'm a very good match.

“You don't have to if it hurts,” she says.

“I want to,” I say. “I want you to get better.”

“Me too,” Dorie says. She holds out her hand to me and I take it. I hold her fingers tight in my palm.

Mom says Dorie and I came out of the womb together holding hands. Dorie came first, pulling me firmly but gently after her. I believe it. Dorie was always the brave one.

“Billy?”

I look up. Miss Barber is staring at me. I don't know how long she's been waiting for me to speak. The side of my face feels cold and numb and my voice sounds far away, even to me.

“Yes?”

“We were talking about your sister?”

“Yes.”

Miss Barber glances uncertainly at her notes. “I understand she was ill?”

“Yes.”

“She's better now?”

As if people always get better.

“She's dead now.”

Only sometimes they don't.

“I am
so
sorry.”

People usually are.

“No problem.”

I was only supposed to save her.

 

5

One of the unusual things about Mom—
Linda
—is that she always insists we have dinner together as a family several nights a week.

The housekeeper will cook something before she leaves and Mom will set the table and light the candles in the big dining room and she'll serve what the housekeeper has made, like pork chops in a chili-verde sauce, which is actually
really
good, as if she made it herself. Dad—
Gordon
—will sit at the head of the table, a bottle of insanely expensive cabernet in front of him, swirling his wineglass, as if he actually knows what he's doing. Mom and I will be on either side of him. Sometimes we'll all even try to get a little pleasant conversation going. It can be pretty nice, really. At least it's a nice idea.

But this is one of those nights when Mom clears her throat and smiles at us and you just know the evening is turning horrible.

“Well,” Mom says. “Did anyone have an interesting day today?”

Dad and I share a quick look. I don't think Dad ever has interesting days, and if he does, they're not the kind of interesting he's going to share with Mom. And so, just to be safe now, he doesn't say a word. Following in his footsteps, neither do I.

“All right,” Mom says. “How about this? What's the best and worst thing that happened to each of us today?” Mom is trying to look cheerful. This is obviously some line of questioning she's gotten from a friend who probably got it from some daytime talk show where women discuss their feelings.

Dad, who
hates
discussing feelings, especially Mom's, sticks his nose into his wineglass and sniffs. This is called “catching the bouquet.” It's a good way to stall for time if nothing else.

“All right,” Mom says, still all pleasant. “I'll start. Betsy Mirrens broke her foot and will be off the tennis court for six weeks.”

Dad frowns. “Betsy who?” You get the feeling that whoever she is, he doesn't like her.

“The Mirrenses.” Mom sounds impatient. “We've joined them for any number of dinner parties.”

Dad shrugs. “All we
do
is join people for fucking dinner parties.” He takes a sip of wine and begins to gurgle it in the back of his throat. This is called “aerating.” To aerate means to add oxygen. Oxygen changes things.

Mom, who doesn't like it when Dad starts tossing around F-bombs, is beginning to look sort of pinched and frustrated. I figure it's time to help her out.

“What's the best thing?” I say.

Success. Mom looks pleased.

“Thank you for asking. The best thing is…” She pauses dramatically. “I got a clean bill of health from Dr. Knight today.”

This makes Dad and me
really
share a look.

It's like this.

About two and half years ago Mom was getting a basic medical checkup and they found a lump in her left breast. Coming after Dorie, this news was a total bitch. They did a biopsy and it was cancer and so they did a lumpectomy and also took out her lymph nodes. Mom was in the middle of doing hormone therapy when they found another lump. This time they did a mastectomy, which removed all of her breast, and even though they did reconstructive surgery at the same time, she was pretty bummed out about it. This time she followed it up with chemo as well as hormone therapy. She lost most of her hair. She spent a lot of time vomiting.

Like Dorie.

For the last eight to ten months or so Mom's been looking and feeling pretty much like her old self which has been nice because it's made it easy for Dad and me to forget what she's gone through.

“Is he positive?” asks Gordon. Like he doesn't quite believe it.

“As positive as anyone can be about these things,” says Mom. She eats a bite of pork chop. She chews it carefully. She swallows. She wipes her mouth with her napkin.

“So,” she says. “Anyone else? Best thing, worst thing?”

Dad sighs. “I don't want to play this stupid game.” He pushes his plate aside and tops off his wineglass.

Mom looks like he's slapped her. “All
right,
” she says, her voice all tight and strained now. She turns to me. “Billy?”

I decide to lie. Really, it's such an easy thing to do.

“I didn't have anything bad happen,” I say, because I am
not
going to tell them about Miss Barber. “But the best thing is sitting right here, having dinner with you guys.”

Mom beams. She looks pleased. Really pleased. So does Dad. He actually smiles. “If that's the case, kiddo,” he says, “you really need some new friends.”

Success.

Everybody grins and chuckles as if that's the
last thing
in the world I need. Because who needs more friends when
obviously
I already have so many I've lost count? Who needs friends when we all have each other?

“Actually I
did
have something kind of funny happen today,” says Dad.

It's not funny at all but the three of us have a good moment or two pretending it is. And then we sit there, pretty much in silence, aerating and changing, for the rest of the meal. For better or for worse, who's to say.

 

6

For some reason, usually after dinner, though sometimes later, Mom always asks me if I'm going to bed anytime soon.

“Sure am,” I say. Even though I'm not.

“Sleep well,” Mom says.

“Sure will,” I say. Even though I won't.

The reality is I don't sleep much and Mom knows it. Several hours a night here and there. Sometimes not at all. I try but I just don't. I haven't since Dorie died. It's a problem.

Fact.

Insomnia is defined as the difficulty in getting to, and staying, asleep. Learned insomnia is when you worry about not being able to sleep, primary insomnia is when there's no reason for you not to sleep, and chronic insomnia is any insomnia that lasts for over a month. Sleep dread is when you're afraid to go to sleep to begin with. I have the entire package. So do the vast majority of institutionalized psychiatric patients.

Just another thing to look forward to.

Tonight, once Mom and Dad have gone to bed, I go back downstairs to the family room where the family never gathers, and with Dorie sitting on my shoulder, I watch TV far, far into the night, never sticking with any one thing for too long. I keep the sound low. Sometimes I turn it off altogether. I go back upstairs around four. I lie in bed. Maybe I doze a little. When Mom asks how I've slept in the morning I'll tell her what I always tell her.

Like a baby.

 

7

“Hammurabi!”

It's a Thursday, sixth period World History, the horse latitudes, and the teacher, Mr. Monaghan, knows he's going down with the ship.

“Hammurabi reigned over the Babylonian Empire until his death in 1750
B.C.
And he did what, people? Anyone?”

No one is remotely paying attention. Mr. Monaghan, small, slight, possibly gay, and one of the few male teachers at High School High who wears a tie every day, and raises his voice like a tourist who thinks shouting will make him understood in a foreign language.

“He created
laws,
people! The code of Hammurabi. The fundamentals of which—”

As Mr. Monaghan turns and paces and lectures to the ceiling, I glance around. I see twenty-eight teenagers who look like they're taking a collective dump of tedium. It's as if their jeans, skirts, and underwear are down around their ankles and they're sitting on toilets with painful, constipated looks on their faces. Of course, part of this might be that no one, except me, has read the assignment. And I'm not about to admit to it.

“… two hundred eighty-two laws, written on twelve clay tablets in—what? Anyone?”

If Mr. Monaghan is waiting for an answer he's going to be waiting a very long time.

“Akkadian, people! The language of Babylon! The foundation of modern civilization!”

He might as well be
speaking
in Akkadian. If one moron brings an accusation against another moron, and that moron leaps into a river, if he sinks, the first moron shall take possession of his house. Some foundation of civilization. Maybe people have always been insane.

And now, just in time to prevent us all from killing ourselves, there's a knock on the door. Mr. Monaghan sighs. He looks discouraged. It must drive teachers crazy to have to spend so much time teaching something that no one really cares about. Of course, the study of ancient Babylon doesn't present a lot of job options to do anything else.

Mr. Monaghan crosses the front of the room, opens the door and steps out into the hallway. Everyone gives a collective sigh of relief. Maybe he won't come back. But then Mr. Esposito, the school principal, sticks his head in, wrinkles his brow, tightens his lips, and squints at us. It's like he's a displeased police detective and he's trying to decide whether or not we're worth making his day. Apparently we're not because after a second he ducks back out. You can hear him and Mr. Monaghan murmuring at one another. I can just see some papers change hands.

“Yes, all right, come in,” Mr. Monaghan says. He steps back into the room. With the guy.

You feel a stir of interest in the room.

The guy is tall. He wears black jeans and a
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He wears heavy motorcycle boots. The jeans, shirt, and boots look like a uniform on him. His dark hair is sort of long and wavy, a lot of it different lengths. He has steel closure rings in his left ear and one in his right eyebrow.

Hammurabi probably did too.

He has a barbed-wire tattoo spiraling down his ropy muscled right forearm.

Barbed wire signifies confinement.

He has brightly colored flower tattoos covering his left.

Flowers are symbols of youth, life, and victory over death.

He has woven strands of wire and leather worn loose around his neck. A metal scorpion dangles from it.

An amulet protects the wearer from harm.

“People,” says Mr. Monaghan, “we have a new student joining us. This is”—and he reads from the paper—“Willard Twomey.” Some of the morons in the class snicker at the name. The guy doesn't seem to notice.

“Take a seat, Mr. Twomey,” says Mr. Monaghan. “We'll get you up to speed later.”

Willard Twomey moves down the aisle and past me. He makes no eye contact with anyone. As if guided by radar, he steps over an outstretched foot. Some of the morons in the class snicker again. Willard Twomey's expression doesn't change.

None of this is happening, and if it is, he couldn't care less.

 

8

At the end of every day in front of good ol' High School High, there's always a line of vehicles clogging the street, waiting to pick up the younger kids who don't have rides or are too lazy to walk. Most of these vehicles are pricey SUVs, and behind the wheel of each of them there's usually a distracted, impatient soccer mom while in the backseat are crying babies, barking dogs, pissed-off toddlers, and sullen middle schoolers.

Fact.

There are over fifty thousand automobile fatalities in the United States every year.

Fact.

Two hundred thousand died at Hiroshima.

Conclusion.

A frazzled soccer mom in a five-thousand-pound sport utility vehicle is more dangerous than an atomic bomb. Really, they can get you anywhere, even in front of your own house. They can even be those who are closest to you.

Example.

I'm on my skateboard, at the end of the driveway, just coming home from school, when Mom almost takes me out with the Range Rover. The window is half open and she's on her cell phone, fumbling with her Bluetooth. “Hold on, Jane. No, nothing's wrong, I almost killed Billy.”

She rolls the window down all the way.

“Billy, the Taylors are out of town. Would you get their newspaper and mail and put it in the house?”

“If they're gone, why are they getting a newspaper?”

“Because they don't want burglars to know that nobody's home.”

“The paper was delivered this morning. It's been sitting there all day. Won't that tell burglars nobody's home?”

“Sweetie, I'm late for my Pilates, will you just do it?”

Mom holds out house keys and I take them.