Frozen

In this frozen scene, I confront the moon of his hairless, dying face. There’s only the frame of jaw and sunken temples, too-big teeth in that head that I love, only this skeleton, though the dance is still in his eyes.

Once he was seventeen, cruising the Salem McDonald’s lot in his freshly waxed black Coronet. We parked shoulder-to-shoulder in our parents’ cars and flirted as we slid our blue-jeaned bottoms over the warm hoods.  He had a way of laughing that started in his eyebrows, flared his nostrils, and curled his lips up - as he sucked in the air that would fuel that laugh. You could watch the joy spread to his limbs.

One star-blasted Saturday night, my golden haired little sister wooed him. That night as a bonfire popped and crackled and licked the snow-washed air, they stole away from our sight as we huddled to the heat and passed a bottle of Colt 45 around. As I watched sparks escape the fire, hurrying toward heaven, I felt a hollow in my gut. I knew a page had turned.

A baby came before she turned sixteen.

I remember lying in bed next to her before she told Mom, the moonlight pouring through the dormered windows, illuminating the flowers on the wallpaper. She slept quietly, her even breaths making the round of her belly rise and fall.  How could she sleep so soundly? As I lay next to her in the dark, I thought about them on a blanket in a field somewhere under the biggest moon. I would have been terrified with a man inside of me. But she slept. I would have been terrified with a baby inside of me. But she slept.

Nancy married Kenny on a yellow day in May. The wedding was planned in mere weeks with tissue paper flowers, a borrowed disco ball, and my brother-in-law’s 70’s music mix on reel-to-reel. We made salads and meatballs, cookies and lasagnas, dips and cakes for days. Even the old Yankee ladies, whom we thought would tisk tisk at the disgrace of it all, baked late into the night as the peepers rhythmically pierced the warming night. Somehow a baby coming quieted every acid tongue. On that wedding day, even the lilacs nodded their approval.

In a little more than a year, Nancy and Kenny had another baby. Two perfect blonde children before age eighteen. I remember pictures of Nancy, with one toddler posing in his best Batman stance and the other balanced on her narrow hip. Her eyes looked weary over a weak smile. She had the wealth of a mother in her children, but as it turned out, not the emotional pockets it takes to raise them.

She had an affair with a guy she met at the coin-op laundry, a man who must have charmed her as he smoothed warm towels into neat bundles, folded in thirds. Maybe it was the way he leaned into the dryer, gathering the sweetened clothes with rough hands. Maybe he said something oddly dear that struck a hungry chord as they passed a cigarette between them, waiting on the curb while the washers chugged.

It seems she found that girl from the moonlit field waiting to break free of the ropes and ribbons that tether women to motherhood. That girl with the wild blonde hair motioned her to go. And off she ran through the flowered fields in search of something she could not name.

In time, Kenny found Pam. She and Kenny raised her son with Down’s Syndrome - and Kenny and Nancy’s two children -  in a small apartment upstairs from his Mom and Dad. She did the books for a restaurant during the day, and then came home to weed the garden, stencil a kitchen wall, cook up a meal and get the kids in bed by eight. As Nancy’s sisters, I think we chafed a bit at how deftly she took over the reins of Nancy’s little family. We felt a certain coolness, close to the ground like fog, as she eclipsed our sister’s ability to mother and stay.

A day came with an ordinary ring of the phone on the cluttered table next to my old green wing chair. I checked the caller id, collapsed in the chair and settled in for a chat. Pam’s voice sounded thin and far away.

“Hey. I wanted to…well. Oh shit. It’s Kenny. He has cancer. It’s in his right lung and in his brain.” I heard her inhale, shallow and ragged and fast. “That’s why his face was sagging a little, on the left. We thought it was a virus... or something. But it’s cancer.”

I felt that high-chested panic. The clock clanged as I squeezed my forehead and clenched my eyes shut. “Oh….shit.”

I don’t remember what else I said to her. I’m sure I offered boundless hope, but inside I knew I was just pinking the black.

“If there’s anything I can do…”

I became his Tuesday girl. That was my day to come and sit by the steel-caged hospital bed - and share a strawberry filled Dunkin’ donut. That was my day to walk that line of mortality and brittle conversation as death sucked his body through his toes. He’d say he felt weak, in his arms, and I’d go get cans of stewed tomatoes from the cabinet and we’d practice biceps curls. I brought him clay to squeeze but his hands tremored wildly. I told him that it wasn’t over until the fat lady sang, and that I wasn’t about to utter a single note. He smiled and pumped the canned tomatoes.

Kenny’s Mom lived downstairs. She’d bring him scrambled eggs and toast with strawberry jam and feed it to him in little bites while she teased and laughed too loud, filling the holes in the air, hiding from the truth that haunted his face. Her baby was 54 and bald, eyebrows and lashes gone. As she made her way down the steep stairs to her kitchen, her voice all singsong in the hall, I remember her hand on the railing, squeezing so hard her veins popped up on the back of her hand.

Dad Jackson would come up the stairs, too - with mock groans about his failing knees. He’d listen to me as I tried to fill the uncomfortable silences with stupid questions and funny stories. I’d ask him what was the best fertilizer for tomato plants - was it the chicken poop kind? Should I plant them or hang them? I’d ask him if he really greased the horses’ asses with Absorbine Junior to make them run faster at the Rockingham Racetrack, where he was a horse handler.

He’d muster laughter but it didn’t hold any happy. I’d see him stealing glances at his dying son as we watched Bob Barka chat up the latest bouncing big-boobed contestant on The Price Is Right. He’d take his leave with the excuse that he needed a nap, but in the air I’d feel the tick of minutes passing that could never be recovered.

I heard their muffled sobs downstairs as Kenny napped.

I rested my head on the pillow next to his and tried to dream it all away. “Don’t get too close, pretty Pitty. I might just have to pinch those big boobies…”

He’d get a slap on the chest for that. He’d grin, showing all of his big square teeth at once. But I’d stay resting there, our breathing in sync. More than once, he’d lace his warm hand in mine, our smells mingling with the clean white sheets. On that sad pillow, I felt his peaceful acceptance of his own reality. And I felt a stunning intimacy as he allowed me to treasure him as he lay dying.

And then I drifted into the pink - pretending it all away.

Kenny would wake up and paw at the table for his lighter and pack of Marlboros. His hands trembled, flame overshooting cigarette tip in a cruel portrayal of demise. And so I’d light up for him. I always hated the smell of smoke. But I’d pose with the cigarette pinched in a peace sign. I’d hold it to his lips while he took a deep drag. I was tempted to inhale as I watched the satisfaction wash his face, surrendering.

He taught me to blow smoke rings while the cancer ate at him, tight circles that stretched and faded in the dusty light until all that was left was a blue haze over our heads.