I’ve always had some incomprehensible bond to him but, I swear by all that’s holy, I fucking loved the guy right then. He said,
“The nurses will massacre me.”
I nearly smiled, said,
“Jesus, they’d need to be quick.”
The cigarette done, he took it, extinguished it, put it in his jacket.
Opened a window to let the smoke evaporate. Either that or he was going to jump. He waved his arms futilely, said,
“You caused quite a stir, Jack. The Guards were here. Even Clancy showed up.”
Venom washed over me, I said,
“No doubt he wept.”
Then I zoned, it was to be like that, into and out of consciousness, lucid one moment, stark raving mad the next. I heard, as if from a great distance, a poem by Marin De Brun, based on Dalton Trumbo’s book, Johnny Got His Gun. The lines uncoiling in my head like a soured mantra: Sightless, soundless Your day’s begun Tearless, wordless, no songs be sung Your hand in ruins Your head in hell.
Snapped back to hear Stewart say,
“Clancy said it was self-mutilation, your self-loathing reached boiling point.”
I said,
“It’s a theory.”
Maybe the nicotine, maybe Clancy, but I finally looked at my heavily bandaged hand, asked,
“How long before I get out of here?”
He told me the truth, said,
“Few days but, Jack, get some rest, OK?”
I thought,
“Rest in peace.”
Before he started on the bullshit of:
They can do great things these days.
Lots of artificial appendages.
Etc.
I told him,
“They had me spread-eagled on a slab of granite, said it was a headstone.”
I could see the dots connecting in his head, I said,
“Stewart, be real careful, you hear me?”
Rare to rarest did Stewart allow his real feelings to surface. Zen kept the six years of prison under wraps and, too, the death of his beloved sister. He utilized that deathly calm to block out the torrents of simmering lethal rage. Kept a mask of amused detachment to keep the world behind philosophical glass.
Not now.
Fury wrapped his face. His eyes were slits of sheer menace. He said,
“I hope to fuck they have a run at me.”
The nurse came, did that fluffing of pillows they do, then gave me a shot, hurt like a bastard. Stewart said,
“I’ll be back later, Jack. Here’s your mobile, it was in your jacket.”
I was slipping back into sleep, said to Stewart,
“They answered the phone to Laura, said enough to send her fleeing back to London.”
He looked truly sorry, said,
“Ah, no, that’s just the bloody pits.”
Which is one way of seeing it, I suppose.
I might have phrased it a little more heatedly.
I kept hoping, praying, that somehow, in some wild flight of a miracle, Laura would write to me, and I could then try, try to explain to her what happened.
No letter.
I wasn’t to know, she did write.
Her letter lay, among the pizza offers, announcements of mega wins on the Spanish Lottery, and bills from the telephone company and other utilities.
There are lines from the insane prose poem “Literary Heroine,” that go
“I swear I’d have read your letter dying,
But alas, it was lost, among the debris of the slow and lying.
It’s the reason why your letter and my life, so softly
Slip away
Un-noticed least by me.”
After he was gone, as my eyes closed, the nurse asked,
“Is he your son?”
Ah, for fuck’s sake.
Before I could rise to indignation, she said,
“Good-looking lad.”
Then in that blunt way that Irishwomen have, she asked,
“Is he married?”
I was messed up enough to lie that he was gay, or say he was married, but I went with,
“I’ll put in the word for you.”
She beamed, said,
“And I’ll get you a sleeping pill this evening.”
Trade-off?
I’m not afraid of dying, but I’m absolutely terrified of dying with a pink teddy bear.
– Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die
Ridge was sick to her soul at what had happened to Jack. Stewart had told her as gently as he could but there isn’t really a way to soften the severance of fingers. He told her, too, about Laura, and Ridge wept. She had so thought that, just maybe, Jack might be happy. Recently, she’d had a checkup and mammogram to see how she was doing after the radical mastectomy. She loved the book by Barbara Ehrenreich on positive thinking and the so- called PC brigade who waxed fucking lyrical about the positive aspects of cancer. The do-gooders who saw cancer as a makeover opportunity. Barbara was her new hero. Anyone who could write that being down, being angry about your illness, meant instant pariah status.
All the pink ribbons, pink freaking badges, made her so furious. Now at last, here was a writer who could say that those who preached cancer sufferers could be cured by developing the right attitude, as they peddled shitloads of pink garbage, books, DVDs, T-shirts, added insult to life-threatening injury.
She fingered her gold miraculous medal round her neck, given to her by her late mother. God, she had adored her mother. A strong woman who, as she lay dying, said,
“Alanna, don’t put me in a hospice.”
She didn’t.
Allowed her the dignity of dying at home. Her mother had fought alcoholism and every other battle in a poor family’s life.
She had, as they say,
“A hard death.”
Near the end, she had gripped Ridge’s hand, whispered,
“Be beholden to no man.”
In light of Ridge’s sexual orientation, this seemed unlikely but, working as a Ban Garda, she had to eat a shit sandwich every day from men. Despite Jack’s numerous flaws, faults, Ridge felt her mother would have liked him, would have said perhaps,
“He has a good heart.”
As for Ridge’s marriage, she didn’t want to think what her mother would make of that.
