DONāT LET ME DIE IN THIS PLACE
My son Jack says Iām being difficult. Itās dinnertime. Itās hot as hell. The mongrel children are kicking each other under the table, yapping and giggling senselessly. The wifeās coming at me with spoonfuls of cold, clumpy porridge. Each time the spoon hovers close to my face my foreign daughter-in-law opens her mouth like sheās instructing me by example. I hate it when she does this. Itās demeaning. I know how to eat, thank you very much. And while Iāve learned to accept with dignity the fact that I canāt really feed myself anymoreāand while, hell, Iāve even learned to live with wearing a bib during mealsāevery time my sonās wife opens her mouth like that itās almost enough to set my dead right arm to shaking.
āJack, please tell her to stop,ā I say, the spoon so close I could lick it, the wife with her lips parted stupidly again. āTell her I hate it when she opens her mouth like that.ā But my son just gapes at me, sighs, and says, āDonāt be difficult, Father,ā like Iām some child misbehaving in a department store.
The wife looks at me, looks at Jack, shoves the spoon back into the porridge bowl. She gets up from the table. The mongrels quiet down for the first time all evening. āEnough,ā the wife says in English to my son, throwing up her hands. āI no do this no more, okay? He eat by himself now, Jack.ā Jack sighs again, calls after the wife by her name. He says, āTidaā,ā but sheās already halfway out of the kitchen, muttering to herself in Thai like some crazy.
Jack blinks at me, frowning. āNice,ā he says, getting up to follow her. āMission accomplished, Father.ā
āWhat? What the hell did I do now?ā
But my son just throws down his napkin and goes to fetch his Thai wife. Soon itās just the mongrels and me staring at each other. A mosquito buzzes in my ear. I reach out with my good left hand to swat it. I miss. The only thing I manage to kill in that ear is the hearing. I watch the girl say something to the little boy in Thai. The boy looks at me wide-eyed. āStop,ā I tell them, though neither of my grandchildren speak much English. āYou shouldnāt stare. Itās rude.ā
To my surprise they seem to understand because they start looking at their half-empty plates like theyāve suddenly cultivated an interest in china. So I sit for a while and look at my foreign grandchildren trying not to look at me. I try to get my hearing back, pick at the assaulted eardrum with my good left hand. I glance over at the bowl of porridge, and suddenly Iām hungrier than Iāve been in a very long time.
* * *
Jackās washing my back with a coarse sponge. Given the eveningās events, my sonās scrubbing me quite hard tonight. Iām rocking from the brash, rough motion. I feel a little bad about thingsāthe wife never came back to dinnerāso I try to keep quiet. But thereās only so much passive-aggressive scrubbing a man can take from his only son.
āDammit, Jack,ā I finally say. āClean me. Donāt skin me.ā
He stops. He comes around and starts wiping down my torso. He doesnāt look me in the eye. Jack hates to look when I bathe. Heās embarrassed by my nakedness. If thereās anybody who should be embarrassed itās probably me. Heās not the one who canāt bathe himself.
āWhatās it going to take, Father?ā he says now, directly at my navel, the sponge cold and prickly against the folds of my stomach. āWhatās it going to take for you to be happy here?ā He squeezes the sponge over my shoulders. Water dribbles down my chest. I wipe at it with my good left hand. āGood question, Jack,ā I say. āYou always ask good questions.ā
He laughs. Itās not a good laugh. Itās a grunting, impatient sound.
āDying would be good,ā I say finally. āDying would make me pretty happy.ā
āFatherāā
āI bet it would probably make you all a lot happier too.ā
āChrist.ā
āWell, maybe not you, Jack, but certainly that wife of yours,ā I say. āSheād probably throw a party. That woman hates me. I know she does. Why, Jack? Why does she hate me? Iām just an old man, you know. Iām very fragile.ā
āShe doesnāt hate you, Father.ā
āOf course she does,ā I say. āJust look at tonight. All I did was put in an honest request and she makes a scene. I swear, Jack, that womanās trying to give me another goddamn stroke. Sheāll kill me with her hate one of these days.ā
āYouāre incredible,ā Jack says, shaking his head. He mutters something else under his breath, soaps my thighs, wipes at my legs with the sponge. Heās working fast now, like he canāt wait to get the whole thing over with, scrubbing in that rough, unpleasant way again. I stare at the top of his head for a while. Itās all depressing me to no end. I feel like furniture. So I look at the shower walls, search for pictures in the mildew like theyāre clouds in the sky. I make out a herd of wild horses galloping across the linoleum. This turns out to be a bad idea because it makes me think of Macklin Johnson back homeāthat poor, beautiful manāand how we used to sit around and rent old Spaghetti Westerns to pass the time, and suddenly something hot and awful blooms in my chest and my eyes start to well up involuntarily.
āJesus,ā Jack says. āDonāt tell me youāre gonna cry now.ā
What can a grown man say to such a thing? My son wipes down my face. Heās helping me into my clothes. Heās carrying me to the electric wheelchair, his arms like tight ropes around my shoulders and legs. Iām still thinking of Mac. Iām still steeling myself against tears. āJack,ā I say, swallowing hard. My son straps me in, positions the lame arm across my lap. āCāmon now,ā he says, smiling at me for the first time all evening. āBuck up, old man. Things will get better. Nobody hates you here.ā
āJack,ā I say again. āI want to go home. Donāt let me die in this place.ā
āYouāre not going to die, Father,ā my son says. āYouāre going to be happy.ā
Iām trying to get some sleep, still thinking of old Mac, when the wife peers into my room and scares me so bad I nearly crap my pajamas. She stands in the doorway, her small silhouette dark and ominous, and says in a meek voice, āMister Perry sleeping?ā and I say, āNo, woman. Mister Perryās pole-vaulting. Mister Perryās running a goddamn marathon. What else do you think Mister Perryās doing?ā
She stands there silently, cocks her head curiously to one side.
āWhat do you want from me?ā I ask after a while.
āI no want nothing.ā Her voice is a little louder now. āI just want to say sorry to you. I no mean to make you upset.ā
āWho said I was upset?ā
āJack tell me you cry.ā
āThatās a lie,ā I say.
āNo lie.ā Sheās shaking her head. āJack say you crying like baby in the shower.ā
āThatās ridiculous. I think I would know if I was crying or not, woman.ā
Sheās silent for a moment. She shoves her hands into her pockets like she doesnāt know what to do with them. āWell,ā she says. āIām sorry for tonight.ā
āApology accepted then.ā
āBut in the future,ā she adds sternly, āif you desire to say something to me you just say it to me, okay? Donāt say to Jack. I speak English. Not so good, but I understand what you say.ā
āSure,ā I say. āYou speak English.ā
She stands there a while longer like sheās waiting for me to apologize as well. But I donāt have anything to apologize about. I wasnāt the one infantilizing a helpless old man during dinner. So I say, āTurn up the fan, Tida. Iām melting in here.ā For a second, I think she might make another scene, but instead she walks over to the fan and kicks it up a notch. It turns on its axle like some creature shaking its head slowly from side to side.
āThanks,ā I say, the fanās cool breeze tickling my face. āThatās better.ā
She walks across the room, stands over the bed, looks down at me for a while. I think she might strangle me, but instead she just pulls the sheets up under my chin.
āOkay?ā
āOkay,ā I say.
āTomorrow will be better, Mister Perry.ā
āI doubt it,ā I say, closing my eyes. āBut letās hope so.ā
When I open my eyes again the wifeās gone. The hallway light is off. Itās quiet in the house and Iām staring in the dark thinking about the last time I saw Macklin Johnson.
We had tickets for an Orioles game. The tickets were his going-away present for me. He was coming over to pick me up. Things already werenāt going so good for the two of us by then. Iād had my little episode and Mac was starting to get confused. His memory was starting to deteriorate. Weād been seeing each other less and less, what with Macās forgetfulness and me sitting at home lamenting my condition, trying to figure out the fancy wheelchair, doing my damnedest not to get into high-speed collisions with the furniture.
So I was happy that Mac got the Orioles tickets. It was a nice gesture. It seemed a way to say good-bye. But I was not so happy about having to remind him every other day about why heād gotten them.
āSo weāre going to a baseball game,ā heād said the week before our date.
āYeah,ā I replied. āYou bought the damn tickets, Mac.ā
āOh. So why are we going?ā
āBecause Iām leaving, remember? Iām going to go live with Jack and his wife.ā
āYouāre leaving? Where the hell you going, Perry? You canāt even get to your front porch these days.ā
āThailand. Bangkok.ā
āThatās a damn shame. Iāll miss you.ā
āYeah.ā
āWhat the hellās Jack doing over there anyway? He get drafted?ā
āBeats me. Heās working in textiles, I think.ā
āPerry, you know I fucking hate baseball. Itās a stupid game. Never understood what the big deal was.ā
So, naturally, I had my doubts about whether Mac would show up on the appointed day. But he did. He was right on time. He rolled up in his old Volkswagen, got out of the van, and it was a beautiful thing to watch him walk up my front steps in one of his old pinstriped suits. He and Patriciaāthe black nurse who came by every morningāhelped me into the van. āBe careful,ā Patricia said before we left. āDonāt get into trouble. You drive real slow, you hear, Mister Johnson?ā
As we got on the highway toward Baltimore it seemed like everything might actually be all right. Mac seemed lucid. He was making sense. He nattered on about his own live-in and how much he liked her, how much better she was than the last one, how she was real beautiful and tall, like an African princess, and how irritated sheād gotten that morning when he said she looked like Nefertiti.
āI donāt get it,ā he said. āA man canāt even compliment a beautiful woman these days.ā Macād always had a thing for black women. Heād married two, the last one, Carmenāa real elegant lady with a wonderful smileāhaving died two years before from cancer in the head. āI didnāt say she looked like Aunt Jemima, you know,ā Mac continued. āIād understand if she got mad about that. All I said was Nefertiti and, wow, slap me silly and call me an asshole.ā
I nodded along, pulled the old ballcap snug over my head with my good left hand. But then I realized weād passed up the exit to Camden Yards.
āHey,ā I said. āThereās Camden Yards, Mac.ā
He looked over at me and smiled. Thatās when I got real scared.
āWeāre not going to Camden Yards, Perry,ā he said, laughing. āYou know I fucking hate baseball. Never understood what the big deal was.ā
āJesus, Macklin,ā I said. āCāmon now. Donāt joke around.ā
āWhat?ā he said. āArenāt we going to Hopkins? Arenāt we going to visit Carmen?ā
āNo, Mac. Carmenās dead. Weāre going to an Orioles game.ā
āOh,ā he said, and now he looked not only confused, he also looked ashamed. āThatās why youāre wearing the ballcap.ā
But Mac didnāt turn the car around. We kept on zipping along that highway. āI knew that, you know,ā he said. āI knew that about Carmen. You didnāt have to remind me, Perry.ā
āTake me home, Macklin.ā
āReally?ā
āYes,ā I said. āI just want to go home now.ā
āYou sure?ā
āYeah. Letās just go rent some videos.ā
It took us a while to get back to the house, me directing Mac the whole time thinking I was living my last hour on this earth. Patricia was still at the house cleaning. She came out and helped me get out of the van and into the wheelchair. She didnāt seem the least bit surprised to see us back so soon. She didnāt even ask about the game. I told Mac to come inside. While he sat in the living room, I called his son Tyrone out in Bethesda.
āJesus,ā Tyrone said. āYou know he shouldnāt be driving, Mister Perry.ā
āNo, I didnāt, son,ā I said. āI really thought he was all right.ā
Tyrone arrived by train a few hours later. When I said good-bye to Mac, he suddenly became lucid again. He bent down and hugged me real hard.
āHey,ā he said. āIām real sorry about today, Perry. But you come back soon, okay? Iāll make it up to you. The world aināt seen the last of us yet.ā
He climbed into the Volkswagen with his son and that was the last I ever saw of my friend. Thatās the last Iāll probably ever see of him. Because Iām lying here now six weeks later in this bed, in this hot, godforsaken, mosquito-infested country, thousands of miles away from ever seeing another Orioles game, with two grandchildren I can barely talk to, a daughter-in-law who mocks my paralysis during mealtimes, and a son who seems indifferent to my plight, all of them sleeping soundly in this house, dreaming their nice little dreams, and Iām so pissed off Iām making a fist in the dark with my good left hand.
Alice would know what to do with the mongrel grandchildren. But Alice isnāt here. Alice is long gone. She never even met these kids sitting across from me now playing a game of gin rummy to help their grandfather pass the time. She never had to deal with the little girl being cute, cheating, spying at my hand through the reflection on my bifocals. Alice never got to slap the girl lightly on the head and say, āHey. Stop that. Donāt set a bad example for your little brother. We arenāt a cheating people.ā She never got to see the girl stare at her uncomprehendingly and then lay down her final tr...