CHAPTER TWO: ST. PETER'S HOSPITAL
Jack leaned over the bed and gently kissed his mother on the cheek. Her eyes fluttered open in response. She looked confused at first but then smiled when she realized who was there.
"Hi, Mom" he said, pulling the chair up closer, and taking her hand in his. "How are you feeling?"
"Better today, I think."
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"No, I'm not hungry. How about you?"
"I had dinner with the Vallones tonight. Mrs. Vallone made lasagna. She made me take about half of it home. It's enough to feed a family of four for the next three days." She always worried about whether he was eating anything more substantial than bologna sandwiches and cornflakes.
She smiled again, more broadly this time.
"The Vallones are good neighbors. I'm glad to see you put on a nice shirt before you went over there. How was Eddie?"
Jack put on his fake smile. "He's fine. He's working over at his uncle's insurance agency, just paper work, filing, says it's boring as heck but they're paying him $4.50 an hour."
Eddie, his alleged best friend, had barely spoken to him all through dinner. Then they'd argued when they went up to his room afterwards. He was glad he'd plowed into him. What a stupid, clueless jerk Eddie was. He was still a kid, even though he was older than Jack. Asked Jack why he'd quit baseball and cross country, and why, by the end of the year, had he practically quit school, too.
Jack had felt totally exasperated with him. Wasn't it all obvious? Couldn't that moron figure anything out for himself? How the hell was he supposed to work two jobs and then go running through the countryside, or play games after school? Eddie had never heard about a little fact of life called the phone bill, or the mortgage. He had no idea about how big the difference was between a survivors' check from the Bureau, and what doctors and hospitals were charging these days. That the health insurance paid eighty percent, and he was on the line for the rest of it.
"Maybe you should think about trying for something over there, for the fall."
"No, I'm better off at the garage, where I can learn something that might actually prove useful. And the A&P pays less but they've been letting me come in and restock after 9:00 p.m. So I think I'm pretty set for now." Not to mention the cash he'd been able to pick up by making deliveries for Jim.
She looked at him sadly for a moment.
"I'm sorry all this has landed on you, Jack. Your father and I never wanted, never imagined..."
"Don't worry about it, Mom. It's better than wasting my time just hanging out, surfing and chasing girls." The smile was real this time.
"Did you take those papers over to Mr. Vallone, so he could go over them?"
Jack looked down at her hand. It was even thinner than he'd remembered. The skin was loose, hanging in folds over her knuckles. How much longer? There wasn't too much left of her it could eat up.
"Jack, I know you don't want to think about..."
"I took them over there tonight. He said he'd look them over tomorrow or the next day." He said it brusquely, cutting her off. "He said that Dad's pension will stop but there'll be something from Social Security, at least until I turn 18, maybe longer, if I'm in school."
"What do you mean, 'if I'm in school'?"
Shit. He'd let the cat out of the bag on that one. She was still sharper than anybody else he'd ever met, at least about him.
"I'm thinking about going right into the Army." He looked away from her. "The thought of sitting in a classroom for six hours a day for the next four years makes me want to jump out of my skin. And if that's were I'm going anyway, why not get there sooner rather than later?"
"College isn't like that. You spend much less time in the classroom; you have much more freedom to plan your schedule. If you want to sleep in every morning, with a little creativity you can make sure you don't have a class before noon."
She looked at him quietly for a moment, watching him while he avoided meeting her eyes.
"This is not negotiable, Jack," she said as firmly as she could. "Is all the paperwork in for your scholarship?"
"Yes. I'm just waiting to hear," he said impatiently.
How many times had he answered this particular set of questions? Either her memory was going or she didn't really believe what he'd told her.
"I told you, the guidance counselor at school thought they'd be falling all over themselves to get me. So there's just the school application to take care of in September. Mr. Roberts said to give it to him once I've got it done and he'll take it from there."
"Dave Roberts was a good friend to your father," she said, leaning back into the pillows. "He'll come through on this one. The Bureau has a way of making things happen that they want to have happen."
She knew his grades had dropped through the floor over the last year. He would need all the help he could get, to get into UCLA now, the place she knew, with her teacher's sixth sense, that he belonged. With the ROTC scholarship, and the proceeds from selling the house, and anything left over from her life insurance policy, and working, they'd figured out he could swing it.
But he needed someone to intercede, to explain what had happened and why the grades didn't tell the whole story. Somebody had to hear and be made to understand that he was finally reacting to everything that was going on with her, and stretched thinner than any grown man should be stretched, let alone a sixteen or seventeen year-old boy. Let the Bureau do something for him, then. His father had died doing his job for them. Let Jack have this one thing in return.
She was sorry that she'd failed him, failed to find a replacement father for him. Though he was mild and at least outwardly obedient to her (his father's imprint showed clearly there), there was a streak of wildness in him, and a headstrong determination, that scared her. He was absolutely fearless. As a five year old he had climbed up to the top of the high dive and calmly jumped off without a moment's hesitation, before he even knew how to swim.
He'd stepped into the breadwinner's role as soon as it became apparent that the gap between the sum of the disability check and the survivors' check, on the one hand, and the total of the monthly bills, on the other, could not be bridged any other way. He had assumed all the responsibility of bringing the money in when she finally couldn't work anymore. He'd dropped the trappings of a normal, middle-class American teenager's life, all the self-centeredness, and the considerable attractions of the high school social scene, without a backward glance. At least, he hadn't displayed any regrets in that regard that she could discern.
That was another way he was like John, but this time the similarity between them was a source of concern. Maybe it got passed down in the genes. If it was a gene it had to sit on that weird male chromosome. Because, just like his father, any emotion Jack considered unworthy he wrapped up tightly in a very small box and promptly crushed. And now he would be totally on his own, with no father to teach him how to turn his basic pig headedness into an advantage instead of a trap. Or how to avoid crossing the line between being brave and being reckless. Nor would she have the chance to make him finally understand that there was no such thing as a "bad" emotion.
But, of the two, she felt he needed a father now more than he needed a mother. Except Jack wouldn't have either. He'd be totally on his own.
"I'm not thrilled about the Army, you know that," she continued after a pause. "But it's your choice. Just like a deal is a deal. But only after college, Jack. That was the agreement. No hassles on the Army, but you get college out of the way first. You'll be much better off going in as an officer."
She closed her eyes for a moment. The pain was getting ready to come back. She had to hold it off so she could make sure she got through to him on this. There was very little time left to tell him anything, to make sure that, if he had to be alone, at least he was on track, headed in the right direction.
He didn't say anything. She knew him, knew every inch of skin on his body, how he thought and what those silences meant.
"Jack, promise me you'll do this the way we agreed."
"Ok, I'll do it like we said."
She kept looking at him.
"Ok, ok, I promise".
"Good. We'll say no more about it, then." Another pause, before another topic that was painful for them both.
"Have you decided who you want named as your guardian?"
"I still don't understand what the heck I need a 'guardian' for," he answered angrily.
"Because you won't be 18. And you won't be able to sell the house, or even live there on your own, without one. And because you don't want some busy-body to say you need to go stay in a foster..."
"That's one thing that's not going to happen, believe me," he said with tight fury. "I've been on my own for the last three months, practically, and I'm not going to do that. I don't care what they try and make me do..." he stopped, suddenly aware of how much he'd raised his voice. She'd just turned white.
"Mom?" She squeezed his hand, too, as tight as ever.
"Mom, do you need something? Should I get a nurse?"
She didn't say anything, just closed her eyes and kept on squeezing.
What an idiot he was, to get her upset over this nonsense. He'd brought this on by arguing with her. Why did he have to argue with her at all? Just tell her what she needed to hear. He'd be doing exactly what he wanted to do, soon enough. As if he wasn't already. Just like he'd let her think Mr. Roberts was helping him with UCLA out of the goodness of his heart.
He started to stand, to go get somebody to give her a shot, or a pill, or something. But she wouldn't let go of his hand. He was surprised she had that much strength left. Most of the time she seemed so weak, so tired. But her grip on him tonight was like iron.
She came out of it sometime after he sat back down. She still didn't let go of his hand, though the pressure gradually slacked off.
"That was a doozie," she said, weak and breathless from the pain.
Jack put his head down, suddenly not able to look at her. Be a man. Don't even think about crying. Suck it in, you fairy. She doesn't need to see you cry. Do you see her crying?
"You have to decide," she repeated, after the several minutes it took for the pain to get back down to a level where she could talk. "You need to decide this right away. They've both agreed to do it. Mr. Vallone just needs to know so he can get the paperwork taken care of."
She tried to smile at him, but it ended up kind of crooked.
"If I thought you were still a child, do you think I'd let you decide this for yourself?" This time it came out gently, not so much weak as gentle.
Jack sat back in the chair, all the anger and resistance washed out of him.
"Let Mr.Vallone do it, then. I'll tell him tomorrow. I know him better than Mr. Roberts anyway."
"Good. Be sure you do that."
"Yes ma'am." It came out automatically.
He sounded so much like his father just then. The voice, the inflection, the tone, there were moments he sounded just like John. 'What did I just hear you say to your mother?' Was John's voice echoing around in Jack's head the way it was in hers? Could Jack even remember his father's voice well enough to know that was what was buzzing around in his head?
"Your Dad" she said, trying to smile at him, "would be so proud of you that the buttons would literally pop off his shirt".
Jack turned a little red, returning her smile with a slightly embarrassed one of his own.
"Are you sure you're not speaking figuratively?" he teased her.
"Nit-picker."
"Do you want to do the next chapter?" he asked, picking up a book that lay on her nightstand. He felt like he'd just run three miles. That was enough business for one night. He just wanted to do the one thing they could both still enjoy doing together.
"You need to get home and get some sleep. Don't you have to work in the morning?"
"Yes, but I'm not very tired. And it's a short chapter".
Besides, he said to himself, I have to do the pick-up around midnight. No reason to head back home before then, only to have to come right back and go over to North Hollywood. When he left the hospital in a half hour or so, if she got back to sleep, there was a bar he'd discovered about six blocks away where they weren't too concerned about how authentic his fake id looked. He could grab a beer and shoot some pool. And do a joint or two, if he felt like it. It wouldn't do to dip into what he was just supposed to deliver.
"Well, only if it's a short one," she answered, sounding really tired this time. "It helps me to drop off."
Jack opened the book to the last dog-eared page.
"Jem was twelve." Jack quoted. "He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite was appalling and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted Atticus: 'Reckon he's got a tapeworm?' Atticus said no, Jem was growing."
They didn't make it all the way through the chapter. Midway she started feeling bad again so he'd gotten the nurse. She gave his mother two of the pills but also got the doctor, the one who was there at night, to come take a look at her. He was a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties. When he was done he pulled Jack aside in the hallway outside her room.
"I want to let you know what's going to be happening in the next few days" the doctor started off. "We have to change your mother's pain medication. The pills we can give her won't really help her anymore. We've got to increase her morphine. She'll be on that pretty much the whole time from here on out." He stopped to give Jack a chance to absorb that, and then continued.
"What that means is, she won't be awake much anymore. It will be like she's sleeping. She'll wake up for short intervals, but then she'll drift out again. If she's lucky, that will be pretty much what she'll be like right through to the end. The thing is" he hesitated "she might not know you're here. She probably won't be able to talk much, or follow a conversation, because the times when she'll be awake, truly awake, will be pretty short."
Jack had no idea what he was supposed to say. He didn't even know what questions the doctor was waiting for him to ask.
"Do you mean I won't be able to read to her anymore?"
"You can read to her. She'll probably like hearing the sound of your voice. But if you're asking if the two of you can still have those discussions I've eavesdropped in on, about things like character development, and the balance of narrative to dialogue...no, Jack, she won't be able to talk about things like that anymore. She won't be awake enough and she won't have energy enough."
So she was gone already, that's what the doctor was telling him. She was breathing and her heart was going. And of course she could still feel the pain (why did that not surprise him?). But his mother was basically gone already.
He'd thought she was gone before, when they'd admitted her this last time, when he realized she'd never come back to the house. But he was wrong. She was only gone from the house, she wasn't really "gone". Even if she was in the hospital they could still talk to each other the way they always did. They could read books together and they could talk about them.
But now she was really gone. Because they couldn't even do that together anymore. All that was left was to just sit there, watching her and waiting for the other things to finally stop.
He realized that the doctor was waiting again for him to say something.
"Ok" he said.
The doctor wanted him to say something else. But he didn't have anything else to say.
"Do you have any questions for me, Jack?" he finally asked.
"No."
The doctor waited a little longer. Then he said "If you decide later on there's something you want to ask me about you can always call me." He handed Jack his number on a blank prescription form. "You may have to leave a message but the answering service will let me know you called and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Just remember" he smiled a little "there's no such thing as a stupid question."
"I have to leave now. I have to go to work," he blurted out.
Saying you had to leave because you had to go to work, he'd found, was like a solid-gold hall pass that never expired. Everybody understood that if you had to go to work, you had to leave right then and there, no questions asked. It could get you out of some really tight situations.
"Where are you working, this time of night?" the doctor asked, puzzled.
"I have to go up to the supermarket. I'm scheduled to re-stock tonight from midnight on," he lied. He had to get the hell out of this place.
"All right. Someone will call you at home if there's any real change in her condition."
"Thanks."
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