"We need to talk."
Ronnie Anne bent, scooped up her heels, and crossed the living room. "Hold that thought," she said, "I wanna get out of these clothes."
She disappeared down the hallway, and Lincoln drew a shivery breath. The clock ticked on and Dan Rather droned apace, his low, steady voice patiently guiding America through yet another news cycle. By himself now, in the relative silence, Lincoln began to waver. Surely he could put it off one more day. 24 hours doesn't make all that much of a difference...unless your name is Jack Bauer.
Only he couldn't put it off any longer. If he did, he might lose his nerve and never do it, even as the sickness ravaged his body and he wasted gradually away. Sick? Nah, I'm fine, it's perfectly normal for a fifty-five-year-old man's penis to fall off. Just grab me some duct tape, huh? The desire to have it out, to get through the storm that he knew would come,welled inside of him, and he swallowed around a lump.
It would be a lie to say that he didn't need support right now, for he did. He would shoulder the burden himself if it would spare his family, but this kind of thing didn't work that way. Dying is a simple matter on paper - just close your eyes and stop breathing - but most things are simple in theory, then messy when you tried to actually apply them. Every action in life causes a ripple effect, and dying was no different. Ronnie Anne would suffer anyway; it would be best for her to know now so she could work through her grief.
If he waited much longer, though, he might chicken out again.
Now or never, he thought.
Lincoln pushed weakly to his feet, swayed, and put his arms out to steady himself. His muscles twinged with weariness and his head swam; abruptly, the idea of bed sounded really good.
Being careful not to fall, Lincoln wobbled down the hall. Golden light spilled through the open bedroom door and pooled on the carpet. He came to a halt just short of the threshold and took another deep breath. It wasn't fair that Ronnie Anne had to go through his. He already put her through eight months of hell and misery in the sixties; that was more than enough for one lifetime, maybe even two. God knows the prospect killed him, but a small part of him always hoped she would die first, that way she wouldn't have to mourn.
Steeling his resolve, he went into the room.
Ronnie Anne stood in front of the closet in nothing but a pair of pale purple panties that came up around her hips, a fashion long since relegated to the ashbin of history. Her shoulder blades undulated beneath her bronze skin as she combed through the selection of nightgowns. Age spots, like constellations, swirled across her back, and her ponytail swished lovingly over the nape of her neck. Seeing her from behind, Lincoln could almost believe that she was somehow twenty again, magically returned to the glory of her youth while the world around her - him included - remained unchanged. The illusion was so achingly real that for one brief moment, he honestly expected her to turn and be as she was the day he married her: Smooth, sun-kissed skin, limpid brown eyes twinkling with a girlish simper, nary a gray in her midnight hair.
A tight, inexplicable sense of loss gripped his chest and his lips twisted into a melancholy frown.
She sensed his presence and tossed a quick glance over her shoulder. "Guess who I had in my office again today."
Lincoln opened his mouth to speak, but his voice broke. Such an innocuous question, idle evening chatter between a long married couple, the most normal thing in the world, but morbid under the circumstances. She had no reason to assume the truth, no inkling that her world was in the process of crashing down around her; she existed in a vacuum of blissful ignorance, which was soon to be shattered like a brittle pane of glass. This was one of those placid interludes before a life altering event;; the split second before Lee Oswald opened fire on Kennedy's motorcade; the moment between Neil Armstrong's foot leaving the step of the Lunar Eagle and setting down on the moon's crust; the minute before Ronnie Anne Loud learned that her husband was dying.
"Who?" he asked.
"Veronica," Ronnie Anne said. She took out a silk nightdress and slipped it over her head. Veronica was Jordan's older sister and one of those all too common kids who spend more time in the principal's office than the principal herself. Ronnie Anne described her as a disrespectful little twit who never missed a chance to talk back to her teachers. I hope Blake and Jordan never get married, she remarked once, I'd hate being related to Veronica.
Dizziness overcame Lincoln and sludge splashed in the pit of his stomach like black, slushy water in the bottom of a bottle. Hot, metallic bile rose in the back of his throat and he battled the urge to throw up. His knees buckled, and he barely made it to the foot of the bed, half sitting and half falling. The mattress springs creaked beneath his weight and a stinging lightning bolt of pain zig-zagged up his right side. He grimaced and let a hiss out through his teeth. Patel said he would be weak and worn out from the chemo, but the pain was -
A long, low fart slipped out of his ass.
- just gas, apparently.
He smiled nervously. He was on edge and for a second there, he thought something awful was going to happen, like a heart attack.
Reaching behind her back, Ronnie Anne undid her ponytail and went on talking, completely oblivious. "...so I put her in ISS and told her next time, I'd send her to the alternative school." She uttered a soft haha as though threatening to banish someone to the dreaded alternative school were one of her favorite bargaining chips...which it was. She loved breaking that one out - she called it my ace in the hole, and it usually worked. The alternative school was the stuff of legends, talked about only in hushed tones like some great and terrible beast that swallowed kids whole and spat out convicted felons. From what she'd said over the years, it was more of a prison than a place of learning, and you were more likely to get hit with a book than you were to hit the books.
She turned and raked her fingers through her hair. It spilled messily around her face and had things been different, Lincoln would have slipped his hands into it and kissed her. She must have seen something in his eyes, or sensed something in his aura, for a slight crease touched her forehead. "You okay?"
No, he wasn't okay.
"We just need to talk."
Her brows knitted even more. "What about?" She padded over on bare feet and sat next to him, concern writ across her features. The hem of her dress rested just above her knees, and Lincoln gazed at her toned legs, trying and largely failing to muster the strength to do what had to be done. She touched her fingertips questioningly to his knee, and he closed his hand around hers; it was small, delicate, and made his heart skip despite the gravity of the situation.
"What's wrong?" she asked, a note of worry in her voice.
Lincoln took a deep breath and met her gaze. "When I went to see Doc Faraday, he...he took blood and there was something in it he couldn't f-figure out, so he sent me to a specialist."
Ronnie Anne's perplexity deepened. "W-What?" she asked, her head shaking back and forth in confusion, "you said it was fine."
He told her that the results came back clean.
Her body tensed, perhaps in anticipation of bad news, and Lincoln sighed. "It wasn't. I didn't want to worry you if I didn't have to, so I lied. I went there and they took tests and they found something called hemoteliosis. It's a kind of blood cancer."
The color drained from Ronnie Anne's face.
Lincoln gave her hand a squeeze that he intended to be reassuring but felt more desperate. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I'm dying."
She blinked as if slapped and tried to speak, but no words formed. Her throat bobbed as she attempted to say something, and raw, animal panic filled her eyes. She shook her head slightly from side to side. "W-What?" Her voice was breathy and small, a kneading inflection sticking in Lincoln's guts like a knife. The phrase "she looked like a deer in the headlights" was cliched, but he would be damned if it didn't describe her right now: Frozen, shaking, and pale, her eyes wide and her chest starting to heave.
Not looking away from the horror even now drawing in the eyes of the woman he loved, the eyes into which he had tenderly stared for the past forty-five years, took every ounce of self-control he had. "They say I have about a year, maybe a little more."
"T-T-T-That can't be right," she said. Her tone was dazed, shell-shocked, and when she shook her head again, it was more of a broken twitch. "No. No, no, no." Water brimmed in her eyes. "Who said that?" It was a wounded demand.
"The doctor," Lincoln said, keeping his voice low, calm, and steady. "I have all of my paperwork and I've already been to chemo and dialysis. It's...it's going to happen."
Ronnie Anne's mind worked, her entire world, her being, thrown into sudden turmoil and her brain desperately attempting to compute what he was saying. "T-That doesn't make any sense, you look fine, you can't be sick." She fumbled her words, her voice thick with denial.
News like this, Lincoln had always thought, was like being thrown into icy water; it shocks the system and scatters rational thought as instinct takes over.
He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and assumed a patient tone that he had only ever used on Alex and Jessy. "I'm going to die," he said at length.
"NO YOU'RE NOT!" Her eyes, standing with liquid like seething whirlpools, narrowed and her jaw clenched. "St-Stop saying that." Passion filled her voice and her hand balled into a fist. "P-People don't just die like that. Who said you were dying? When did they even say that?"
Lincoln nodded firmly. "Yes, they do, Ronnie, you know that. The doctor -"
"That doctors a quack," she spat. "He's full of shit and so are you. Y-Y-You don't just d-die like that. T-They can do something else if you're sick. They can always do something else. I-It's 2001. 2 fucking 001, you're not gonna d-die."
She stumbled over the D word, and more water filled her eyes, trickling down her flushed cheek like drops of ice.
"Yes I am," he said pointedly, "I'm dying right now."
Her lips quivered and more tears fell down her cheeks. Her chest angrily expanded and contracted. "Don't say that." She no doubt meant it as a thundering, God-like command, but it slipped out as a whisper. "D-Don't say that."
She broke down then, her lithe frame shaking with the force of her sobs. The high, kneading sound of her misery twisted in Lincoln's heart and a clump of raw emotion formed in his throat. He pulled her to him, but in her overwrought state, she tried to pull away, as if by doing so she could deny, and perhaps even halt, what was happening. "Don't say that," she moaned, "don't say that." The rage, so recently and vividly present in her wet eyes, was gone now, replaced by shimmering, childish hurt, lending her the appearance of a little girl betrayed by someone who was supposed to love and protect her. He thought randomly of Lola and Lana - he bet they looked like that a lot as children, and that nearly broke him.
He took Ronnie Anne into his arms and pulled her body flush to his. She stiffened, trembled like a small, frightened animal, then went limp against him. Her tears soaked into his shirt, dampening the fabric, and even now she tried to wrench away, to flee the horrible revelation that her husband and the father of her daughter, the man to whom she had dedicated her heart and her life, was soon going to die Lincoln could do nothing to console her but stroke his fingers through her hair and place unsteady kisses on her forehead. He was dimly aware of shedding his own tears, but those didn't matter right now, nothing mattered but Ronnie Anne.
It seemed like hours before her tears tapered off into pitiful whimpers. She was curled like an overgrown child, and Lincoln gently rocked her back and forth with a low, calming sush.
"Por favor no me dejes," she muttered and clutched her front of his shirt in her hands. A fresh batch of tears exploded from her eyes and she went back to sobbing. "Por favor no me dejes. Lincoln...please don't go."
The day had come.
He couldn't put it off any longer.
Like Christ in the Garden, he prayed for the burden to be taken from him, but also like Christ, God ignored him. He expected as much and didn't resent the Big Guy for not changing His plan. Hold up, guys, Lincy-winky doesn't want to die, let's give him a pass, huh? Everyone has to pass away at some point, it's just the way things are. You can be angry, you can rage against God, fate, and your own mortality, you can even cry until you're all out of tears, but none of those things worked. He knew...he had tried them all.
Part of dying was telling your loved ones you were dying. It was messy, painful, and he'd rather take another tour of 'Nam than have to do it, but like that kid on that sitcom said, them's the breaks. Several times during the past few days, he caught himself wishing he'd croak in his sleep and be spared, but that was selfish and only served to steel his resolve.
He had to man up and do this. Think of it as a rite of passage or a baptism by fire or what the hell ever you want. To him, going through with this was an act of transformation, atonement for his pride and self-serving nature. It was a threshold to cross, a means of advancement, the one and only way to progress. If he chickened out now, his selfishness and cowardice would cement like clay in a fire. The last time, the saying goes, pays for all, and this was his last time.
Lying in bed on the evening of April 29, soft purple twilight ghosting across the window pane and low orange glow spilling in from the hall, Lincoln stared restlessly up at the ceiling and mentally readied himself for what was to come. Ronnie Anne told Luan that they wanted to talk to the girls alone, and even though Luan raised a questioning brow, she didn't protest; currently, she was having dinner at Lori and Bobby's, and Jessy and Ronnie Anne sat together in the living room, watching the nightly news, by the sound of it. Alex was on her way home from work with plans to stop in. Ronnie Anne told her it was important, so she'd be here, it was just a matter of when.
Hopefully never...and hopefully soon.
He wanted it over with, but he also didn't want it over with. Dark, slushy suspense pooled in the pit of his guts like black ice, and pangs of dread rippled through his stomach. How could someone be so conflicted? How can a house be so divided against itself and continue to stand?
One of life's great mysteries, he supposed. People are contradictory creatures but they always find a way to justify or compartmentalize it. We are the only beings on earth blessed with that peculiar spark of higher reasoning, and we constantly manage to misuse it. Lincoln himself wasn't innocent, no one is. The Bible tells the story of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. They lived a life of blissful ignorance until Satan tempted Eve to eat fruit from a forbidden tree, and she in turn tempted Adam. On eating it, they realized they were naked and tried to hide themselves - gone was their simple nature, replaced by knowledge. Lincoln didn't know if that actually happened or not, but it served as a fine metaphor for human consciousness. It's a big responsibility to bear, one that simple beings such as us were not meant to shoulder. We set grand ideals, we know, in our heart, what is right and what is wrong, but we can't always meet them, and even though we recognize that which is wrong, we're still drawn inexorably to it like moths of a killing flame.
We like to think we are free, but we're not. The birds are free, the fox is free, the fish are free...man is enslaved to a standard he can never reach, saddled with a heart and mind and something else, something more, a little flicker of special logic called a soul. We are two beings in one: An animal driven by biological instincts on one hand, and a spirit governed by principles, values, and God's innate law on the other.
At our very core, we are a contradiction, an impossibility, a freak of nature spawned by being dragged into the revealing light of a knowledge we were never supposed to have.
Where was he again?
Oh, right. He was torn between wanting to tell Alex and Jessy and get it off his chest and not wanting to tell them. He was going to do it, his mind was made up, but...goddamn it, he really wished he didn't have to.
But like another old saying said: Wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up. That was more cynical than he wanted to be, but it was true. Father Jack told him not to expect a miracle, and he didn't; God could wiggle His little finger and save him, but He probably wouldn't. He could wish and pray all he wanted, but he was going to die. He didn't ask for this, didn't want it, but he had it.
Letting out a sigh of resignation, Lincoln sat ponderously up and steadied himself against a wave of lightheadedness. His leaden body weighed a thousand pounds and gravity pushed down on him like a pair of insistent hands (lay down, Linc, goddamn) but he got to his feet instead. After using the bathroom, he shuffled out into the living room. Jess sat cross legged on the couch with Allison's head resting in her lap; the little girl stared rapt at the television, where Ed, Edd, and Eddy fled down a suburban street in terror from a trio of trailer park sluts. This was the show that had the kid who carried around a plank of wood with a face on it, right? That made him laugh because Mom told him once that when she was a kid, she played with anything she could get her hands on since toys were either nonexistent back then or too expensive for her folks to afford, he couldn't remember which. That lead him to believe wood boy was really goddamn porn and he almost felt bad for him until he remembered he was a cartoon character.
He didn't like that show anyway, he was partial to Spongebob;. He didn't think he was supposed to root for Squidward and Mr. Krabs, but he did anyway. He didn't know why, but they both reminded him of someone, and the Krusty Krab reminded him of somewhere.
Okay, he knew exactly what they reminded him of. Himself. Mr. Krabs was the sweaty, money-grubbing owner or a trash heap restaurant and Squidward was an old grump who hated everything, especially his annoying neighbor. Then you had the Krusty Krab, which was a goddamn dump with food so good it made you cum in your pants, an underwater version of Flip's if he ever saw one.
In the kitchen, Ronnie Anne stood at the stove and stirred the contents of a metal pot with a wooden spoon. Steam billowed into her face and the warm scent of Mexico permeated the house, spicy and good; surprisingly, his stomach growled. Hungry, asshole?
Limping over to the table, Lincoln sat heavily and winced at the grating of his bones. Owing to the cancer, the cartilage that cushioned them was rapidly wearing away. In three months, he'd probably be confined to a wheelchair. By January or February, bed ridden.
A shiver went down his spine, and he shoved those thoughts away. Contemplating death was bad enough, but thinking of what came before was even worse.
Ronnie Anne tapped the spoon on the rim of the pot, sat a lid on, and set the spoon aside. She turned, saw him, and sent her eyes to the floor, as though they were partners in a crime so horrible she could barely stand to look at him...or herself. "Hey."
"Hey."
"How you feel?"
"Better," he lied. Every evening, sometimes before dinner and sometimes after, he laid down for an hour or two. He usually dozed, but today he didn't; too much on his mind. "What's for dinner?"
Sitting across from him, Ronnie Anne brushed a limp strand of hair from her face. "Menudo rojo."
Made with beef tripe, onions, chili peppers, hominy, cilantro, and lime, red menudo is a light, mildly spicy soup that every old wife in Mexico could make in her sleep. Ronnie Anne made it once or twice a month, and Lincoln sucked it up the way a Democrat sucks up tax dollars. It played hell on his ass the next day, but it was worth it. "Sounds good," he said.
"Are you hungry?" she asked with a note of hope, as though he could eat his way out of his graveward trajectory.
"Actually, yes."
The last time he ate was that morning. He had crackers and chicken broth. His stomach had been upset since the previous afternoon and it was all he trusted himself to keep down. "Good," Ronnie Anne said, "I made a lot."
He probably wouldn't eat much, but there would be leftovers, and the only thing better than hot menudo was cold menudo.
The front door opened and closed, and Lincoln tensed.
Alex was here.
Ronnie Anne leaned over to see around him, and something akin to fear flickered in her eyes. He turned just as Alex came in from the living room. "I smell something yummy," she said.
Abruptly. Lincoln's appetite was gone.
For weeks he'd been waiting for this very moment the way a condemned man waits for his date with the gallows, and finally it was here.
"Menudo," Ronnie Anne said. "It's almost done, do you want some?"
Alex sank into the chair on Lincoln's right. "Nah, me and Tim are taking Blake and Zoe to Chuck E. Cheese's." She darted her gaze apprehensively from him to Ronnie Anne. "So...what's up?"
Just like Lincoln suspected, she knew that whatever they had to tell her, it was important and somehow related to his sickness. "Let's go in the living room," Ronnie Anne said and stood, "this chair's hurting my back."
Allison sat cross legged on the floor and stared up at the TV; Blossom, Buttercup, and Bubbles soared high above Townsville, leaving pink, blue, and green contrails in their wake. He and Ronnie Anne took up position on one side of the couch and Alex and Jessy on the other. Both of them looked edgy. Lincoln swallowed with an audible click, and Ronnie Anne laid a comforting hand on his knee. He was grateful for her touch, and returned it, their fingers threading together and squeezing.
He could always count on Ronnie Anne to be there for him. Through thick and thin, good times and bad. He stroked his thumb along her finger and drew as much strength from her as he could. How should he start? What should he say? Jessy and Alex looked at him expectantly, and he'd never felt as put on the spot as he did in that moment. He knew in an instant what it was like to rip your pants on stage in front of a million people - all those eyes boring into you, seeing you at your weakest and most vulnerable. A hot blush spread across his face and he took a deep, calming breath.
Ronnie Anne gave his hand another squeeze and looked at him, her eyes questioning. Do you want me to do it? they seemed to ask.
Yes, he did, but that was his weakness and selfishness rearing its ugly head again.
That was the old Linc, the cynic who believed in nothing and took his life for granted.
He sighed and forced himself to meet Alex's eyes. She anxiously chewed the inside of her bottom lip. She looked so much like Ronnie Anne at thirty, but he could see himself in her plain as day, and perhaps it was his hurbis speaking, but that made her all the more beautiful. He loved Jessy just as much, but Alex was different...she was special. She stood as a testament to his love for Ronnie Anne, his commitment and devotion made flesh.
"I, uh...so I have something to tell you." He looked at Jessy; she was just as tense and drawn as her sister. She was not his daughter by blood, but he adored her the same way he did Alex, and he was so grateful that he got to be her father. Yes, he was selfish even now, because if given the chance, he wouldn't change a thing with her. He'd consign Luan to prison all over again as long as it meant having Jessy. She brought something to his life and family that would have been missing otherwise, and he couldn't imagine life without her. "I…"
He trailed off and tried to collect his thoughts. He and Ronnie Anne talked about how to do this, but neither one had reached a conclusion on what to say or do.
The best way, he thought, was quick and crisp, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
"I'm dying."
The air left the room in a rush, and the color drained from Jessy's face. For a split second, Alex stared at him uncomprehendingly, then his words sank in and her eyes widened in alarm. "W-What?"
Jessy's hand clutched the front of her blouse, lending her the appearance of a woman in the throes of a heart attack and the look of shock in her face cut Lincoln deeply.
"I'm dying," he repeated. "And...I have been this whole time."
Alex's mouth opened and closed strickenly, then she threw her hands up. "I-I thought you were fine."
"I'm not," he said, "I didn't want to tell you so I...I lied." He told them everything, starting with the fatigue of March. He gave them both an amended version, but this time he was honest. It wasn't cancer, it was hemoteliosis; he wasn't going to get better, there wasn't a cure.
Alex and Jessy listened in stunned silence, and when he was finished, they gazed brokenly into space, their expressions blank like two traumatized refugees. Alex opened her mouth, then closed it again and slowly shook her head in denial. Tears flooded her eyes and she pressed her quivering lips tightly together.
"Oh, honey," Ronnie Anne said softly. She let go of Lincoln's hand and took their daughter in her arms, whereupon Alex began to cry in earnest, the sound of her misery like broken glass in Lincoln's soul.
Jessy held her trembling hand to her mouth and rapidly blinked back her own tears. Lincoln haltingly held out his hand, and she came to him like she had when she was a little girl with a nightmare still lingering in her mind. He wrapped his arms around her and she broke down, shudders wracking her frame. Allison sat on her knees and watched them fixedly, her brow wrinkled in confusion. What are you doing to my mom? Why is she crying? Lincoln stroked Jessy's hair and shushed her. Hot, stinging tears leaked down his cheeks, but he kept his composure.
Ronnie Anne pressed Alex's head to her bosom and brushed her fingers through her hair. She, too, was crying; in the past ten minutes, she had aged ten years, the lines of her face deeper, and more. Alex looked up at him, eyes watery, and he held out his other arm. She shifted and buried her face in the front of his shirt, no longer sobbing but not still either. He hugged both his girls to his chest and placed a tearful kiss on the side of each one's head. Ronnie Anne blotted her eyes with the heel of her palm and took a shivery breath.
When the storm had passed and everyone was as calm as they could be, Alex and Jessy both sat up straight, looking tired and washed out. "What did the doctor say?" Alex asked. "How l-long do you have?"
"At this rate, six months," Lincoln said, "maybe a little more."
"Did you get a second opinion?" she asked.
For some reason, that struck him as darkly funny and he snorted.
"I'm serious," she said, "you can go to other doctors a-a-and they might know more."
She was in denial just as her mother had been. Taking her hand, he looked her in the eyes. "There are no other doctors, Alex," he said, "this is a terminal disease. It's just how it is." His eyes strained to lower, to hide themselves from the raw, animal fear in her liquid browns like a sinner from the might of God, but he forced them to stay. "It's my time, and...I'm okay with that. I don't want to go, but we all do."