RAM: The Open Book

They breathe a sigh of relief when I say that he’s down for his afternoon nap. Just like a baby. They also know that this means that I won’t be leaving right away. I have to wait to say good-bye. Anytime could be the last time.

I go and sit in the yard. On the grass with my skirt hiked high so the leaves stab my soft thigh flesh. I must feel alive.

We decide that I will go after dinner. We make pasta and watch the news. The car is packed. Lingering. I hug the brother. I hug the boyfriend. I hug the wife. We are all crowded into the bedroom and I turn to my best friend. Every time I leave here I think it is for the last time. He sarts to cry. It’s becoming that, crying. He wants to talk alone. He is afraid of dying. He is afraid to be alone. He is afraid of the nothingness. I try to hug him but it is hard to hug a sack of bones. His skin hurts. He tries to kiss me. I tell him how beautiful it will be when he leaves his body – no more pain. I want him to believe that. Life cannot stop in a breathe, only the body stops. Life must go on, somewhere. It’s an adventure, this dying thing.

I must be getting ready for my drive back to my life. Or what I have of a life. A job. A boyfriend. An apartment. A painting studio. All mine and seperate from this.

The Peugot 404 is parked out on the street. I do not park in the carport. The carport is outside, on the other side of the bedroom wall, where my friend sleeps. The morphine creates a terror in my friend, that the cars in the carport will come crashing through the bedroom wall and land in his bed. He stiffens everytime he hears an engine and then relaxes when it is turned off. My car, out of respect, stays on the street.

I’ve had eight long distance trips to the death room. Every time I find it both hard to get here and then hard to leave. It’s just hard.

The boyfriend and the brother are checking the oil, wiring up some stereo speakers to the little radio to create a mental diversion for the ride home. In turn, my wagon gives them a diversion for a moment.

He falls asleep with the newspaper in his hands. Or passes out from the drugs, who is to say? His hands barely keep the paper from drifting to the floor. I take the paper and fold it, set it down on the top of the dresser. I lower the hospital bed into its sleeping position and arrange his pillows for a nap. Sitting next to him by the bed I take a long look at my best friend. He is barely recognizable as someone that I know. He is just a skeleton of the impish man I almost married years ago. His skin is stretched taught over his skull and cheekbones. His face resembles a prehisotic bird with its feathers plucked. His nose has become a beak protuding between his eyes. My friend’s feet are atrophied because he no longer uses them. He looks so peaceful when his eyes are closed. He looks like death has already claimed him. The body has taken on an ashen, grey tint. Morbid in its various shades of livliness. The skin has wounds from being poked and prodded by needles and rubber covered fingers. Touch him and bruise follows. He has long ago taken to wearing his hair as short as possible, it sticks out of the top of his head like the bristles of a much used toothbrush. His beard continues to grow. He has so long ago tired of shaving it. I wonder where the energy comes from, to be so sick and still have the strength to grow a beard.