Twelve Months (11 page)

“I called my doctor's office and was told he couldn't see me until October, three months away. I wasn't surprised. This guy was good, but he was affiliated with a pool of doctors that had sold out to the HMOs. The minimum wait to see him was usually a month. I explained to the receptionist about my hand and she told me to go to a walk-in clinic that picked up the overflow of people like me who needed a doctor and couldn't get an appointment.

“To make a really long story short, after months of visits with my primary doctor, who referred me to one specialist after another, I was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, or RSD, a very rare disease which prevents a person from healing properly. Basically, the brain continues to send messages to the body that a certain area needs to be healed when it doesn't.” Dewey mentioned the technical terms, but I had a hard time following him.

Most of it didn't make sense to me – the brain wave patterns, nerve dysfunction, and things like that. I had no idea what to say.

“Some say that the pain's worst than having cancer,” he added.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bella flinch. I never moved an inch. “Is that right?” I managed.

He nodded. “I can't even explain the constant pain,” he said. “It's agonizing…and it's changed my life.”

I reached over to hug Dewey but stopped. I didn't want to cause my old friend any more pain.

“It's okay,” he said. “The morphine pump they put in my back has been working well.”

We hugged.

After a moment, Dewey chuckled, cynically.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Who would have guessed that all this pain – even my death – would be caused by three brutal letters?”

“RSD?” I asked.

“No. HMO.”

I nodded.
You're not alone
, I thought,
we're all d
y
ing
. But I never told him about the blood in my stool, the random vomiting, the sharp abdominal pains that often bent me in half and the debilitating fatigue. And from the look I shot Bella, she wasn't going to tell him, either.

As we waited for Maureen to come home, Dewey asked, “By the way, when did you get so serious?”

“Huh?”

He chuckled. “The Don DiMarco I remember had everyone in stitches. That's always been your gift.” His eyes drifted off to a kinder time. “I always swore I'd see you on The Tonight Show making the whole country laugh.”

Bella nodded. “I agree,” she said.

“You never know,” I told them both. “It ain't over yet.”

We ate a nice meal, the five of us, before bidding our farewell. I was still missing Riley and the kids from the Charlotte trip.

At the door, I shook his hand one last time. “Dewey, again, I'm sorry for…”

“Knock it off,” he interrupted. “It's already forgotten. I was stupid.” He shook his head. “There were so many times I wanted to call you but didn't.” He grinned. “But we're here now, right?”

“Right!”

“Well, it doesn't look like we have another fifteen years,” Dewey said. “What do you say we get together same time next year? I'll even head out your way next time.”

“Sounds great,” I told him and never once considered telling him I was the one who probably wasn't going to be around. “Let's do it, buddy,” I said, concealing the fact I was ready to collapse from exhaustion.

He turned to Bella. “Will you make sure for me?” he asked.

She kissed him on the cheek. “I will,” she promised.

I missed the puzzle and if we were going to finish it, we needed to get moving. As I worked, Madison and Pudge looked on and listened to my history lesson. “The first puzzle was made in the mid-seventeen hundreds by a London engraver and mapmaker,” I explained. “He mounted one of his maps on a sheet of wood and cut around the borders of the countries using a sharp saw.”

Madison looked as though she understood. Pudge was already lost.

“Puzzles were designed to teach British children geography. Toward the end of the century, drawings were glued on the front of the wood, while a pencil traced where the cuts should be made on the back. Cardboard puzzles came next, like a giant cookie-cutter that made complicated patterns.”

She nodded.

“But the wooden puzzles stayed more popular than the cheap cardboard puzzles. By the early nineteen hundreds, many were pictures of scenery, trains and ships. Before long, puzzles became harder and adults began doing them as much as the kids. They were even used as advertisement and given away with toothbrushes.” I looked up. Madison was still with me. Pudge was in Never Land. “During the Great Depression when no one had any money, puzzles bought a whole lot of entertainment for a small price. It could be done by one person or a group, and would occupy hours. And they could be recycled. They could be broken apart and put back together by someone else.”

“But why do you like to do them so much, Poppa?” Madison asked.

“Because they're more fun than watching TV.” I gave her a wink. “And if they're addictive, they're as harmless as stealing one of your grandma's cookies.”

She giggled and nearly woke Pudge from his daydream.

As we talked about everything and nothing at all, Pudge eventually returned to the present and said, “I wanna be like my friend, Brian Andrade. He's not afraid of nothin'!”

“I doubt that's true, Pudge,” I told him. “Besides, you know there's nobody else like you, so why would you want to be like anyone else?”

“Because we're supposed to try out for the play at school and…”

“And?” I abandoned the puzzle and looked him in the eye.

“And part of me wants to do it, but part of me's too scared.”

“Everyone's afraid of something.”

“You're not,” he blurted and said it with such conviction that I almost believed him.

“Are you kidding? I've been afraid of things my whole life. Everyone is. The question is whether or not you can be brave enough to stand up to your fears.” I looked at them both. “Don't ever let any of your decisions be driven by fear.” My mind quickly flashed pictures of Vietnam and facing my estranged friend, Dewey, and I nodded with conviction.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, challenging me.

I didn't hesitate and went down the only path I've ever traveled with the kids – honesty. “I always wanted to try stand-up comedy, but never had the guts,” I admitted and thought for a moment, remembering my wise mother's words: “Encourage someone and they'll be grateful. Inspire them and they'll never forget.” It wasn't on the honey do list, but I figured,
what the hell?
I peered into Pudge's innocent eyes. “I'll tell you what – why don't you and I make a deal. If I can get on stage and try stand up comedy, then you can try out for the play. What do you say? Is it a deal?”

“It's a deal.”

As I wondered what I'd just gotten myself into, we shook on it. “Sometimes, you have to stand up, Pudge. Courage is one of the few things you can fake in life and get away with. Even if you don't feel brave, just act like you do and the rest of the world won't know the difference.”

They both nodded. “And that's not all,” Pudge said.

I awaited an explanation.

Madison jumped in, saying, “And leave more than what you take, right, Poppa?”

“That's right,” I said. “See…you've both been listening.”

The bet haunted me right away and I told Bella about it. She laughed so hard I thought she was going to blow a gasket. “You really are pulling out all the stops, aren't you?”

I smiled, thinking,
Public speaking is feared more than death. If I can overcome that, then cancer should be no big deal
. “I figure it's time to overcome something I've feared my whole life. No regrets, remember?”

“I know,” she said, “no regrets.” She hugged me and I watched as a mischievous grin forced its way into the corners of her mouth. “But this one's not on the list, either,” she teased, “and you only have one item checked off so far.”

I thought about the little voice inside my head – or heart – that was constantly telling me to
hurry up with the list
, but I decided to ignore it. “I know,” I told Bella, “but this may be bigger than anything on that list.”

Grinning, she gave me another hug. “Relax, funny man. I know. I'm just teasing you.”

The next day, I was sitting on the toilet – going another round with the constipation – when Bella barged in with the telephone in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. “You're on Wednesday night,” she announced, “open mic.” She smiled at me. “I'm on the phone right now with John, the booker at Stitches Comedy Cafe.”

“What?” I asked in the loudest whisper I could.

“Yep, he'll be there,” she said to John and walked out of the bathroom to leave me alone with my panic. For the first time in a long time, I had a chance of depositing something into the porcelain bowl.

The moments leading up to Wednesday night lasted an eternity. I wrote some jokes, rehearsed them, then wrote more and rehearsed them, too. I had to scrap my fat jokes about myself because they no longer applied. I memorized and paced, memorized and paced. A few times, I even dry-heaved, imagining a crowd of strangers staring at me like I was stupid – and not being all that far from the truth. That was the thing; the more I tried to visualize myself succeeding on stage, the more I could see an embarrassing failure awaiting me.

Though they begged, I pleaded just as hard with Riley and Michael to miss my first performance. They reluctantly agreed, as long as they could “sit in the front row for the second show.”

Bella drove, while I pretended to study the cheat sheet of jokes on my lap. It was unseasonably warm out, but not nearly warm enough to produce the giant sweat rings that grew under my armpits. A few miles up the road, my forehead began dripping onto the page of jokes, smearing a few of the unproven punch lines.

“Relax,” she said, “You know the material inside and out. You're going to do great.”

I understood what she was saying, but she had no idea of the powerful storm raging inside me. My heart was pounding so hard I couldn't hear myself think, never mind read. My breathing felt short and labored, and I was drenched in sweat.

She looked over at me and smiled. “We've arrived.”

Though it didn't make me feel as good as I'd hoped, the place was almost empty. It made sense. It was an open mic on a Wednesday night, promising a handful of amateurs and even fewer laughs. Bella and I searched out John, the booker. He was seated at the bar with a checklist in hand. “You're going on fourth,” he told me and looked up from his clipboard. “Relax. You'll be fine.”

I have no idea who the three were who went before me, or how they did but I'll never forget the moment the host grabbed the mic and announced, “Now let's give a round of applause for another first-timer, Don DiMarco.”

Bella rubbed my back for luck, two-dozen people began to clap and a bolt of terror struck my heart.
You went to ‘Nam
, I told myself and willed my legs to move toward the stage.
You can do this!
With a racing heart and a cotton mouth, I climbed the three giant stairs that led to the stage, grabbed the microphone from the stand, wiped my arm across my forehead and faced the crowd. A bright obnoxious light blinded me and I couldn't see a thing. It was the most beautiful light in the world. I took a deep breath and couldn't believe when the first few words came out of my mouth. “Believe it or not, I actually learned about the birds and the bees from watching two dogs go at it,” I said. “I was no more than eight, sitting in the backseat of my father's Cadillac, second-hand smoking a pack of Pall Malls when two dogs, locked together, hobbled out in front of our car – the male stuck in the backside of the female. My dad looked into the rear-view mirror and smiled. ‘The ol' boy ran out of gas,' he said. ‘She's just towing him home.'

No one laughed. My pulse quickened even more.
Come on, folks
, I thought,
I'm seconds away from a stroke up here.

I gave a fake chuckle. “I swear my childhood was like the deleted scenes from the movie,
Deliverance
.” In a business where some type of reaction is absolutely necessary to press on, silence killed quicker than colon cancer. I swore I could hear crickets in the back of the room. I kept going, trying not to rush off the stage. “Life's all about choices, isn't it? I recently had to make a difficult choice – get rid of the cigarettes, or kick the heroin. Quitting smoking isn't easy. I had no choice, though. It was slowing me down on my paper route.”

Some guy in the back laughed. I wondered if it was from another joke he'd heard.

“They had to fit me with a nicotine vest, 500 milligrams coursing through my body.”

Silence.

As if I were trying to defend my dignity in a dunce cap, I told a few more bad jokes and actually finished with, “Goodnight, folks. You've been great,” thinking,
I guess that's what happens when you memorize everything.

Dripping sweat, I walked off the stage and straight into Bella's open arms. I totally bombed and couldn't have been happier for it.
I did it!
I'd faced the monster, and though it wasn't pretty, I'd survived. When we broke the embrace, I looked up to find her crying. “That bad?” I asked.

She shook her head, but said nothing.

I grabbed her hand. “What is it, hon?”

“I'm just proud of you, is all,” she said, but we'd been together too long to pull off even the kindest fib. They were tears of sorrow. Even though there were still moments when I forgot I was dying, the truth of it lived with Bella every minute of the day.

“Oh, babe,” I said and held her hands tight.

“Tough crowd tonight,” I heard John say behind me, interrupting our moment. “Want to try it again next week?”

Without even thinking, I nodded. “Sure. Why not.”

Bella discreetly wiped her eyes and shook her head. “Great. Another week of torture,” she teased.

I kissed her, and thought,
Fear can be so damned exhilarating!

The following week, Riley and Michael hurried into the joint for a table up front. I walked in smiling, took one look around and felt like vomiting.
Oh God
, I thought.
This isn't last week. Now it's real.
There were a hundred people in the audience. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I wanted to walk out of the place and apologize to my family on the long ride home.
But Pudge will be unbearable to face
, I knew,
and he's going to face at least this many people for his play. Gran
t
ed, it'll be an easier crowd than this, but he's only five.
When I did the math, it seemed like a fair deal. My own words came back to bite me: “All you have to do sometimes is stand up. Courage is one of the few things you can fake in life and get away with. Even if you don't feel brave, just act like you do and the rest of the world won't know the difference.” I took a deep breath and joined my family at the table up front.

Bella took my sweaty hand in hers and tried to soothe me. “You're gonna be great tonight,” she promised.

I looked at Riley and Michael. They were nodding in agreement. I felt like crawling out of my skin.

It was the same torment while waiting. It was the same blinding light once I'd coaxed my legs onto the stage. I even told a few of the same jokes that had bombed, adding, “Have you ever wondered at what point in people's lives they decide to give up on dental hygiene?”

A hush ran over the crowd. They were with me, waiting for the payoff.

“Seriously,” I said, “on what day do you wake up and say, ‘You know what, I'm never brushing my teeth again – ever!'

Two people chuckled – I think.

“Well, let me tell you. For me, that day's today.”

The same people laughed.

“My Nana, God rest her soul, suffered from this lazy affliction. Before she passed on, we gave her the nickname Summer Tooth.” Again, I tried to time the pause. “Some ‘er green, some ‘er black and some ‘er missing.” I shrugged. “It was so bad that pudding became a challenge.”

The two drunkest people in the place laughed before I was escorted back to my table by my family's applause. The rest of the audience remained quiet.

Bella stood to kiss me, Riley's eyes were swollen from crying, and Michael shook my hand. “That took real guts,” he said.

I felt like I was in shock. From the moment we'd arrived, I just wanted to get up there, deliver my lines and get off. The laughs didn't matter all that much – which was a good thing. If I'd learned anything from my recent cooking class, the real value was in the effort – not the outcome.
But why do I have to suffer each time I go up?
I wondered.
Why can't I just remember that it's not so bad getting up there?

One of the other comedians came over to the table. “Don't sweat it. Tough crowd tonight,” he said.

“That's what they told me last week,” I replied, still dazed from the experience.