Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories (10 page)

“You know, I could get you a job down on Fifty-Second Street,” another friend, Jerry, remarked one day. We laughed: Jerry and his wife, Pansy, laughed a lot. They stayed over together, and in the morning when I arrived they’d report on the previous night and show me the yellow legal pad where we kept track of Cal’s injections, meds, liquid intake.

“Tina still hasn’t slept,” Pansy whispered hoarsely. She ran a greenhouse in Verona and looked like a flower herself, slender with huge violet-circled eyes, fine silvery hair, voice husky from sleeplessness and pot smoke
.
“See if you can get her to sleep.”

“We can’t,” said Jerry. He was a boatbuilder who’d helped make the pagan standards that he and Pansy had put out on the porch, to billow in the winter wind. “She’s getting kinda crazed.”

“The nurse says if she doesn’t sleep she’ll have no strength left for when he goes.” Pansy’s eyes were bloodshot; she fingered a little leather bag around her neck, an amulet made by Cal with loons painted on it. “See if you can get her to sleep.”

For five weeks that was my job: getting Cal and Tina to sleep. The morphine made Cal restless, struggling reflexively to rise from the futon, but he was too weak and dizzy to stand. If there was no one there to catch him he would fall, and did, lacerating his skull; or else he would have seizures. The medication to control these would knock him out for five or six hours, but Tina didn’t like to give it to him. She was afraid he would die in his sleep; she was afraid to sleep herself, thinking he would die then. I would practically force her onto the futon beside him, tucking the two of them in, Cal unconscious, Tina wild-eyed and speaking slowly, purposefully, crazily, like a child with night terrors. Sometimes she would read to him, from Hans Christian Andersen. He would say, “I love you, Fox,” she would say, “I love you, Little Wolf,” and curl around him like a cat. He couldn’t move by himself; she would lift her head every few minutes, checking that he was breathing and then looking around until she saw me, sitting in a chair and reading old issues of
Vogue
. A few times I got her to go up to the loft, where she finally would pass out for an hour, maybe two, before climbing back down the ladder again. Several times we had to contact the hospice nurse who was on call, to come help when an IV popped out, or to talk us through the process of administering a new type of painkiller—opium suppositories, the morphine pump
.
The morphine continued to make Cal restless; he hadn’t eaten for ten days, was taking in very little fluid, but he still tried to stand and walk to the bathroom. He couldn’t walk, of course, and what water he did drink he would vomit up again within an hour, along with black bile.

One night while Tina was in the loft sleeping I read aloud to Cal, “The Seven Swans” from the Brothers Grimm. As I read his eyes flickered, so sunken in his white face they were like marbles buried in the snow.

“That’s nice, Carrie,” he whispered when I’d finished. “Thank you.”

It was the last time he said my name. Afterwards, as he slept, I read “The Juniper Tree.”

—

Meanwhile, Marlene gathered all the bones, tied them up in her silk kerchief and carried them outside. There she wept bitter tears and buried the bones beneath the juniper tree. But as she put them there, she suddenly felt relieved and stopped crying. That was when the juniper tree began to sway, its branches moving as though they were clapping. At the same time smoke came out of the tree, and a flame that seemed to be burning. Then a beautiful bird flew out of the fire and began to sing, the most beautiful song she had ever heard
.
.
.

—

When I finished “The Juniper Tree” I started on the book of pagan death rituals that I found in the living room, alongside ar
ticles on cancer therapy and acupuncture left by Luna and Pansy. I prayed that up in the loft Tina was sleeping. But every time Cal stirred she would peer down, and I despaired of her ever resting at all. If Tina slept for two hours it was a triumph. I would always pass out before dawn and feel like Peter in Gethsemane, waking to the sound of Tina ringing a pair of piercingly clear Tibetan temple bells as she stood before the window facing the sun, reciting an incantation.

—

Spirits of the East, of water and sky and starlight, I welcome you.

Spirits of the West, land of fire and the dying sun, I welcome you.

Spirits of the North, hear u
s
.
.
.

—

As the weeks passed, Cal grew frailer and weaker, though his hands when I helped him to stand were painfully strong, fingers like claws digging into my arm. There were always people around now, sometimes only two or three of us; at other times the house was full, like a party. Cal’s ex-wife Yala came from Vermont and stayed for three weeks. Some cousins and an elderly aunt flew in from Texas and stayed for several days. That was the last time I saw Cal really happy, just beaming with delight, his eyes widening behind the morphine cloud when he saw them walking slowly towards him, like people on the moon.

“Hey Cal, you ol’ peckerwood!” Cousin Bub shouted, and Cal laughed and fell into his arms, really fell, Bub yelping as he caught him. “Hooboy, too much of that reefer, huh!”

Before Cal got sick, their house had always seemed like backstage at Mardi Gras, masks and marijuana smoke, patchouli and the Neville Brothers or Joe Ely blasting from the speakers. But as the weeks passed it became more and more like a cave
.
The windows were covered with scarves and Tibetan hangings. Tiny blue Christmas lights blinked on the ceiling like phosphorescent insects; there were votive candles burning everywhere, in blue glasses and on plates, lined up in front of the corner altar where statues of goddesses and wolves and foxes peered out from thickets of ivy and datura blossoms. The smell of marijuana grew choking; sage and juniper burned in ashtrays and abalone shells, so that there was a constant sweet blue fume. When I smoothed out the bedclothes I found crystals the size of my fist beneath Cal’s pillow, amethyst and rose quartz, and necklaces of red thread. The music was soft Japanese flute music, the shakuhachi flutes that Cal loved and played himself. We got in the habit of always whispering, of touching each other as we passed, not so much for solace but as though finding our way in the dark. On the futon Cal lay, eyes closed, breathing softly, and sometimes it seemed he did not breathe at all. He did not speak anymore, or wake. He smelled of marijuana and sweat, a harsh strong smell scarcely obviated by sponge baths and lavender oil and aloe ointment for his bedsores. His auburn hair lay in two long unraveling braids upon his breast, his hands and arms were curled like ferns. He had always worn gorgeous heathen jewelry, of bone and ivory and silver, Celtic torques and lunulas, wristbands wide and weighty as manacles, strings of turquoise and lapis lazuli, earrings and dragon pendants and bones threaded in his hair and beard. On his finger he wore a heavy gold ring with a dragon on it, from Nepal.

But little by little the jewelry had been removed, to make it easier to probe veins for the IV, to get him in and out of his clothes, to turn him so the bedsores would not get worse. He seemed to have only two modes of being now, anguish or unconsciousness. He was on eight different kinds of morphine, but when he was awake none of them really cut the pain. I became obsessed with giving him shots, and later with the morphine IV. I could not bear to see him, that beautiful face twisted in pain, the way he whispered
Oh, oh, oh fuck
, too weak to even turn his head, too weak, almost, to blink.

Someone asked me once, someone who didn’t know Cal, “Have you thought of, you know?” Meaning, had I thought of killing him, of ending that interminable unendurable pain.

No, I said, never; and did not say what I
did
think, the impossible bargains I made at three o’ clock in the morning with the pagan deities flitting about the room: what I would give up to save him, which digits, which hand, which leg; eyesight, the power of speech, an ear; two; my tongue.

—

One day when only Tina and I were home, a woman named Deirdre came. Deirdre was a friend of Luna’s. Neither Tina nor I knew her.

“Are you a massage therapist?” I asked.

“No.” Deirdre was my age, beautifully dressed in stark clothes, black soft trousers, white silk shirt, her dark hair sleek and expensively cut. She had strong patrician features and wore no makeup; her eyes were pale blue and sharply intelligent. “I’m a holistic advisor and a clairvoyant. I help people make transitions from one life-stage to the next. I can see their auras, and help them through the Seven Gates. I’m going to do some work with Cal. But I think Tina is the one who needs some help,” she added softly. Her voice was calm, reassuring yet businesslike; she reminded me of the midwife who had delivered my children. “She looks exhausted.”

“She is. She won’t sleep. She hasn’t slept for days.” I didn’t say that Tina seemed almost demented from sleeplessness and grief. She paced around the house, her long dark hair loose or hidden beneath one of her Laplander hats, a syringe in her hand or a mug of tea or a joint. Right now she was carrying an eagle feather and an abalone shell with juniper burning in it; she was fanning the smoke, moving quickly from corner to corner and returning again and again to Cal’s motionless figure, wafting smoke over his face as she chanted.

“I’ll work with her,” said Deirdre. “But I’ll see Cal first.”

For over an hour she knelt on the floor behind Cal, cradling his head in her hands. Shakuhachi flute music played softly, incense burned, the cats crept across the beams overhead and light snow fell outside. I felt as though I had been here all my life; that life had shrunk and tightened like a telescoping lens to this pinpoint of being, Tina in the shower, myself doing the dishes and picking up newspapers and feeding the woodstove, a woman kneeling
with a dying man’s head in her hands, her eyes closed and her lips
moving silently. When at last she finished, Deirdre stood, stretching, then came into the kitchen where Tina and I were drinking green tea.

“How is he?” asked Tina. Her eyes were huge and black, her wet hair neatly brushed and hanging down her back. “Is he still here? Is he still here?”

“He’s here,” said Deirdre. She smiled. She looked tired but peaceful, her face unlined, unmarked by her travels. When she looked at you, you felt as though she were shining a flashlight into your eyes. “He hasn’t left. I’ve gone with him, we walked through all the gates but the last one. He’s been there before—”

“He has!” Tina nodded urgently. “He has, lots of times—he’s not afraid of dying, he’s done it before and he’s never been afraid! That’s why I’m so confused—I think it’s the morphine, he can’t remember what he’s supposed to do.”

“That could be. He’s worried about you. He doesn’t want to leave you.”

“I know!
”
Tina wailed. “I know, I know—but I don’t want him to stay because of me, not if it’s his time! But I don’t want him to go, and he knows, and I’m afraid I’m confusing him, I’m keeping him when it’s his time to go—”

She began to cry. Deirdre put her arms around her. She stared past Tina’s shoulder into my eyes and I felt as though I had walked in on a mother nursing her child. “That’s right, that’s right, let it out, let it go. You’re mad, aren’t you? You’re so angry at him—”

“I am, I am! It wasn’t supposed to be like this! We did everything we could! We did everything! There’s no time—it happened so fast, it wasn’t supposed to be this fast—he’s gone and I’ll be alone, I don’t know how to do anything, I just wanted to be able to make love to him again, I want to fight and have him make dinner for me, oh Little Wolf, Little Wolf—”

She began to sob, wrenchingly. I turned and tiptoed into the back room, where Cal and Tina’s clothes hung on racks and were stacked in neatly folded piles; a hippie queen and king’s ransom in brocade and velvet and hand-embroidered cowboy shirts. From the next room I could hear Tina’s grief rushing out like water into a pool, Deirdre’s soft voice comforting her and calling out loudly, encouragingly when Tina’s sorrow choked into rage. Now and then I peeked through the India-print curtain, and these glimpses underscored the sense of watching someone give birth: the screaming, the agony, the constant strong presence of a woman who held you and talked you through it. The same knowledge of an inevitable outcome; the same exhaustion afterwards, when I finally came back out to hug both of them. There was even a sort of terrible joy, a radiance in Tina’s face as she held me and the tears came again as I stared over her shoulder at Deirdre, so calm and strong
.
And I was helpless to do anything at all.

Tina went back to sit with Cal, kneeling to wipe his forehead with a washcloth. I walked Deirdre to the door, watching as she pulled on boots and coat and scarf.

“What can I do?” I asked. “For Tina? What can I do?”

“I know you want to make everything better, Carrie. I know you want to help her, and that’s really good, she needs someone to take care of her. But you need to be open with your own grieving, and let Tina see that. Show her it’s okay that she feels this way.”

Deirdre’s gaze met mine and I knew she saw right through me. I could only grieve like a teenager, alone in my room at night
.
At the benefit concert where famous and near-famous and formerly famous singers and musicians raised money for Cal’s medical expenses, I sat in the front row and clenched my jaws so hard I had a headache. But I would not cry.

“And see if you can get her to sleep,” Deirdre finished. She touched my hand and I nodded.

“Right,” I said. I went back inside and watched Tina, curled up beside her husband with the cats sleeping at their feet, like Hansel and Gretel
,
Jorinda and Joringel, all those lost children. I stayed until Luna arrived for her night shift, and then drove home through the snow, not crying then either because I didn’t want to go off the road; not crying until I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where Cal was hugging me, strong and straight as ever. It was only a dream, but for a little while, at least, he had been there. And I was able to cry.