"Seven Days to Begin Again"

“Seven Days to Begin Again”

On Mondays, Gray Porter plays a two hour set at the Blue Dog Saloon. He’s played there every Monday for the past year, despite the fact that the bar has changed hands to three vastly different owners. Originally the spot for progressive rock, it had a short lived stint as a reggae club where Gray’s Monday night gig was widely unpopular and unpaid; it is now more of a hipster hang-out, peddling over-priced coffee alongside organically brewed beer. On Mondays, every Monday, Gray performs to a sea of Mac-books and horned rimmed glasses, to people who listen to their headphones instead of him and who never clap when his set finishes; Gray hardly notices. He sings every Monday, despite the audience or pay, to the empty chair marked reserved at the table center left.

               “That was really great, Gray.” The waitress winks at him, her long, false lashes fluttering. She leaves him a drink with her number scribbled in black on the napkin. He smiles, nods in thanks before finishing it in one long, desperate gulp. He leaves the glass on the napkin, the ink smearing from the condensation, the numbers illegible and diluted as he leaves the club, heading home.

               Except it wasn’t his home, it was his brothers. Gray leaves his keys in the green, clawed bowl in the foyer; the one that sits underneath the wedding picture of Joey and Liz. He pauses, briefly, before the sting of reality really starts to radiate, before the pain of remembering sears like a hot poker through his mind, bubbling like a blister, leaving him raw, exposed, and scarred.

Gray hates that picture. Partly because he knows the smiling coifed groom is a fraud, and because Liz doesn’t look like Liz with her hair pinned back, her eyes shielded by a small tuft of veil. She’s smiling in a small way, like’s she’s won a prize in a contest she didn’t enter. But ultimately, Gray hates the picture because he’s in it, in the back ground, fuzzy in the field behind them, unaware at the time that he was caught in the frame, downtrodden and alone, a shadowy blemish in an otherwise perfect image. There were a dozen other photographs of them, standing in the field, better pictures even, in Gray’s opinion; ones truer of Liz, with a bigger, brighter smile, ones without the sulky figure in the background. But this was the one Liz choose to blow up and display in the hallway, parading his heart-ache for the entire world to see. A reminder every time his keys clinked loudly in the bowl of the reality of his life.

When he looks at Liz in the picture, he tries not to see the demure bride, but instead how she was, is, really, somewhere inside the cancer-riddled body. Honey-colored hair, straight, coarse, always down, enveloping her rounded, smooth shoulders. One tooth that’s crooked in the front, an imperfection she tries to cover whenever she laughs, guarding it balefully with the slip of her hand. A laugh that knocks Gray breathless, full and deep, like a cold river running through, purifying, cleansing. Tiny, little green chameleon colored eyes, that absorb and change depending on her mood, but naturally the mixed, hazel color of herbs. They widen, Gray notices, whenever he walks in the room, black vanquishing the green…

               “You’ve got to stop looking at her like that.”

               Gray jumps, startled, embarrassed. Kate sits in the middle of the dark stairwell. She tilts her head in the same fashion as Liz, a trait, Gray thinks, is the only similarity the sister’s share. His voice waivers on the question. “Like what?”

               “Like you love her. Like you’re in love with her.”

               Gray laughs half-heartedly but Kate remains unmoved, unconvinced. He sighs, a mixture of exhaustion and defeat, briefly glancing at the picture. “Is it really that obvious?”

               She nods.

               “Do you think Liz knows?” 

               Kate shrugs. “Women always know.”

               Gray thought he hid it well. His stomach wrenches, his heart quickening. “Do you think Joey knows?”

               Both sets of eyes immediately divert to the door off the landing. It is closed, sometimes locked.  A small, electronically-colored glow seeps from under the door, flashing, but hardly ever going out. In the quiet, they can hear Joey clicking his mouse, occasionally cursing under his breath.

Kate is beautiful, like Liz, but harder. She’s been different lately, Gray had noticed over the past few weeks, her eyes tired, distant. The swift jolt of resentment changes her face completely, illuminates it. She sneers, bearing a grim line of straight, white teeth. “Joey.” She chews his name, wrinkling her mouth in disgust, and then says, as if spitting him out: “Joey doesn’t even know she’s dying.”

On Tuesday night, Kate cooks dinner. Gray watches in bewildered amusement as she sautés and dices and boils. Kate’s husband Tom arrives around six and joins Gray, beer in hand. Gray knows something is up, because Kate adamantly refuses to cook, her own brand of feminism—and Tom generally doesn’t come to the house if he can avoid it. Death and dying aren’t for everyone. Even Joey joins them, lured down by the appetizing and unusual smell of fresh ingredients, wafting from the kitchen. Tom attempts to jump-start small talk while Gray peers out the kitchen door and up the stairs, wanting a quick peek into the office that’s hardly unoccupied.  Kate snaps her fingers, annoyed, and points a long rigid finger, sending the three in the direction of the dining room.

               Liz is already at the table, wearing a dress that devours her and a costume quality Marilyn-blonde wig that is slightly skewed a-top her normally bald head. Gray stifles back a laugh as Liz tugs it straight on either side. She smirks, casting her eyes away from Joey, uncomfortable in the chair next to her and gives Gray a friendly wink as she brings the oxygen mask to her gaunt and ashen face.

               They eat and both silence and unease descend upon the table. Gray loses his appetite and sets down his fork. Kate, feeling as though everyone should feel honored by her effort, peppers the uneasy silence with snide comments about how no-one is eating and by repeatedly badgering everyone, except for Liz, how they like the peas, the steak, the sweet, soft rolls. The non-responsiveness of the table places Kate on her frequently mounted soapbox. She’s half way through her tirade about the link between woman’s oppression and the rise of popularity of Martha Stewart cookbooks when Gray can’t take it anymore. He opens his mouth to speak, to tell Liz that no one wants the equivalent of a last supper, even if cooked by the feminist messiah herself; and to encourage her not to give up, that he hasn’t and Kate hasn’t…but Joey speaks, and all heads snap in his direction.

               “What is this all about, anyway?” Joey motions towards the table cloth, the candles. Gray points to Liz’s wig as an additional observation. She takes it off and throws it at him, her laugh a diluted version of the original. Gray chucks it back at her, completely unsettled by its dampness and how small she looks without it.

Liz gives Kate a pointed look. “Hell if I know. This is all Kate’s doing.”

Everyone stares at her in expectant silence. “Shall we guess?” Liz suggests.

Gray goes first. “Sex-change operation?”

“You have cancer?” Liz chimes in and everyone flinches. Liz rolls her eyes and shrugs her tiny shoulders.

Joey smiles, an unusual occurrence. “You’ve become a republican?”

“You wish,” Kate says with exaggerated disgust. She looks at her hands, at Gray, at the candles. She doesn’t look at Liz. Gray wonders if she really does have cancer. It’s hereditary and fast, striking without warning. Kate has that distant look about her again, she squirms and goes white and covers her mouth as if she’s about to be sick. Tom takes her hand and she pauses, locking eyes in such a lovely way Gray feels a little intrusive. Kate takes a breath, a small sip of wine, and looks her sister straight in the eye. “We’re pregnant.”

Liz covers her mouth and squeals hoarsely, the only one who reacts, momentarily strengthened by joy. She leans over and pulls Kate into a hug. Kate is stiff, emotionless and looks to Gray. He forces an encouraging smile, but for him, the world has shifted slightly off its axis.

                “I’m so incredibly happy.” Liz sobs into her polyester hair. Gray quietly congratulates Tom with a handshake over the table, forcing a smile as a fresh wave of grief he doesn’t entirely understand overcomes him. Joey rises, expressionless, and quietly leaves the room.

               Liz continues to pepper Kate with questions, questions, questions; questions about the baby Liz will never get to meet. Questions about the future (the future without Liz). The underlying reality is pressing down on all of their chests. Except for Liz, her joy is unfaltering and Gray is unable to detect any hint of underlying sadness. The questions and plans continue long into the night, until Liz grows ill and Gray has to take her in his arms and carry her to bed.

Wednesday is a bad day for Liz and for Gray and for Kate. Not for Joey, Gray thinks hotly as he wipes bile from Liz’s chin. He hadn’t left his office since after dinner the night before.

“You don’t have to do this, Gray.” Liz is angry today, her weak voice acidic. “I’m not your responsibility.”

               Gray turns away to ring out the towel in a basin of water. He wipes a wet cloth across her forehead and she moans with relief.

               Her scalp is pin-pricked with sweat. “He’s not strong enough to see me like this: sick, dying and weak. He can’t handle it. He stopped looking at me the day we found out about my expiration date. You should have seen the look on his face when I showed him my bald-spot, right after that first round of chemo. He was disgusted. He is disgusted. But who wouldn’t be? I mean, look at me.” She holds up her bone-thin arm. It reminded Gray of a featherless bird wing.

               Gray looks pointedly in her eyes. “You are anything but disgusting.”

               Liz holds his gaze for just an instant, before her eyes fall away. “Well, you’ve always looked at me differently than Joey does. He likes his women to have an air of mystery,” she says with a clipped, resentful tone. “Nothing mysterious about a woman who has a hard time controlling her bowels.” She laughs bitterly and shakes her head. “I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t so exhausted.”

               “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Gray assures her, watching her face carefully. They so rarely spoke of Joey, and now Gray understood why. It was too painful, for both of them. But how does she really feel? Gray wonders, about him? About Joey? She curls on her side, in tremendous pain, denying, yet again, Gray’s offer of pain medicine. “You know how I feel about that stuff,” she says through gritted teeth. “I want to be here, until the very end.”

               “How are you feeling?” Gray asks.

               “Isn’t it obvious?” she asks dryly, before doubling over again. She grabs his hand and squeezes tightly. She begins to sob quietly, turning away.

Gray climbs into her bed, holding her tightly against his chest. “Do you want me to get Kate?”

               Her body loosens, the pain subsiding for a moment. She gasps for breath; her entire body is sweating and trembling. Gray is sick from how insignificant she feels against him, weightless, like a child. “No,” she says. “What I want is for you to talk to Joey.”

Gray leans against the headboard. No, he thinks, I can’t.

“I need to know…” Her voice gives out, she closes her eyes and her breathing alters, her eyelashes fluttering. Gray touches her face and she startles slightly. She whispers, like an after-thought, like the last words uttered on the cusp of unconsciousness: “I’m only afraid he’s going to be ruined with regret once I’m gone.”

It’s as if she’s stabbed him, Gray tightens his arms around her, his heart faltering from the acuteness of her blunted words. He knows intimately how it feels to be ruined with regret. He kisses the smooth top of Liz’s head and decides that no one, not even his flawed brother, deserves to feel the way he’s felt since the day Liz entered his life.      

At four forty-five am on Thursday morning, Joey climbs into the passenger seat of Gray’s van. They ride in silence for the twenty miles, Joey staring restlessly out the window, Gray white-knuckling the steering wheel. They stand in silence in the bays of the dilapidated warehouse, far enough from the other delivery people that they were spared from small-talk, but close enough to see the delivery truck appear, kicking up dust and rocks as it trembles along the road, stopping at the mouth of the semi-circle of people waiting impatiently in the damp morning. The back door of the truck is opened, creaking along the hinges, the stacks of newspapers land hard on the graveled ground. Gray waits for the initial rush of clamoring to subside before he and Joey begin to count the stacks, lifting them by their plastic bundles, stacking them on top of one another in the opened back of Gray’s van.

They fold and slip the newspapers into orange bags, all the while Gray’s mind is whirring and grinding, like a machine off its track, warring within itself, fueled and demented by anger, regret and indecision. Unsure how he could stomach mending the relationship between his undeserving brother and the girl Gray loves more than anything, more than music, more than oxygen or money, more than Joey ever could. Gray grits his teeth, swallows down the anger and, for once, wishes he were alone. Joey had evaporated, had holed himself in that goddamned office doing God knows what. Joey was the one who had given up gigs, sub-letted his apartment and taken up odd-hour jobs in order to help keep Liz out of hospice. And yet. He studies his hands, concentrating on the perfect three fold of the paper. But how could he deny her, Gray asks himself, it this is her final request? He always knew loving her was wrong; and as Gray and Joey shut the back door of the van, their hands smudged black with print, Gray knew without a doubt, that this is his own special kind of torment, the consequence of loving someone he shouldn’t.

               Gray drives and Joey tosses, always neatly hitting the doorstep, never the door. The precision and the silence is the norm, but on this particular morning, Gray is suffocated by it: the slap of the paper on concrete, the slow meandering of his car, up a street and then down, and then on to the next, the tension in the car mounting, crippling.

 “What are you doing up there, in your office, night after night?” Gray doesn’t mean his voice to sound so accusing, but he is bolstered by a general feeling of carelessness. “She’s your wife, man, and Kate and I are the ones taking care of her. You just float around like nothing has changed, like she isn’t suffering, like she’s going to be there, when you finally get your shit together…”

               Joey doesn’t move his eyes from the window. He exhales as if he’s been waiting for these questions, as if it’s some kind of relief. He throws the paper a little too hard. It smacks against a mailbox and lands in the road. Gray stops the car in the middle of the street, puts it in park and sighs. “Look, man, it’s been hard on all of us…but if you have a problem, or you need to talk about something…”

               Joey looks at him with a mixture of confusion and guilt. Gray is more embarrassed than mad. “I mean, I can see how porn can be an escape, but it’s taking over your life…I haven’t even mentioned this to Liz…she’d be heartbroken if she even suspected…” Gray shakes his head, “Or if Kate were to ever catch wind of this...” He exhales sharply with the thought.

               Joey’s face twists oddly with understanding, the corners of his mouth pulling down. Gray frowns; bracing himself for the confirmation of Joey’s perverse ill-doing. Instead, Joey bursts out in loud, robust laughter.

His eyes are clamped shut, one tear squeaking out the corner. He holds his stomach, gasping for breath between words. “Porn? Really? Is that what you all think?” His laughter is a relief to Gray, who chuckles, unsure of what this means, slightly stunned at how different Joey looks as he is laughing.

Joey composes himself, wiping at his eyes. He rolls the newspaper in his hand, and he looks at Gray, and they see each other, probably for the first time in years. Gray can see the sleeplessness in Joey’s red-rimmed eyes, the worry carving deep lines into his face. Gray listens as Joey talks, the words spilling out of him, the shape of his shoulders almost lifting from their slouch. He’s looking for a cure, he informs Gray, searching for more time, for something, for anything. He talks of a clinical trial in Switzerland, of drugs you can buy illegally off the internet, shipped from Canada, that have added months to patients’ lives. Gray realizes that Joey seems unaware of time, of the progression of Liz’s illness and Gray’s heart swells with a deep, encumbered sense of pity.

He doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t to be replaced, doesn’t want to be the one to help his brother understand her. Gray’s throat burns and he thinks of her face, her swollen eyes, her uncertainty and knows that despite all the reasons he doesn’t want to, he will. He will do whatever it takes to make her happy, to help her die in peace. “She doesn’t need all that now, man,” Gray whispers. He turns his face towards the window, clamping his eyes shut. His voice is a whisper. “She just needs you.”

Joey is quiet and vacant again. They sit in the silent, idling car for a long time; the newspaper rolled tightly in Joey’s fist twisted and frayed at the ends.  Gray begins to wonder if he had gotten through to him, if anyone could, when Joey finally looks at him, his eyes alit with grief.

 “She’s dying.” Joey hides his crumpled face in his hands, his voice thick with defeat. “Fuck.”

On Friday, the hospice nurse is to come and Liz banishes Kate and Gray from her room. “I don’t need you,” she says. She’s tired and wearing her Marilyn-wig. Even it’s beginning to wear thin, balding at the sides. “Get out of this house,” she orders weakly. Go to a movie. Meet some new people. Get a life.”

“Do you mind if I stay?” Joey calls from the doorway awkwardly.

Liz nods, bewildered and glances towards Gray. She smiles appreciatively. “Of course you can.”

The nurse arrives and Kate and Gray take their leave. They only get as far as the front porch steps before they realize that they have nowhere to go. Kate is still wearing her pajamas.  She’d slept over the night before.

“Doesn’t it bother Tom when you don’t come home?” Gray asks.

Kate considers this. “No,” she says with a degree of certainty. “He works a lot, he’s hardly ever home himself. Besides, he realizes it’s only temporary….”

Gray flinches and Kate covers her mouth and shakes her head. “I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s true, though.” Gray swallows hard. “It’s only temporary. It’s nice of him to understand that.”

Kate nudges him softly. “Got an extra newspaper laying around in that creepy van of yours? We could go see a movie or something.”

Gray doesn’t like to leave if he can help it.  “I don’t even know what’s playing.”

Kate smiles playfully, but her voice is sad. “Well, we could go to a bar or something. You look like a daytime drinker.” She drops her eyes. “It might give you a chance to meet someone.”

Gray arches his eyebrow. “Liz put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“Busted.” Kate laughs half-heartedly.

Gray looks at the sky, unsmiling. “I don’t think there’s anyone else out there for me to meet,” he answers somberly. Kate frowns, unnaturally concerned. He attempts to keep his tone light. “Why don’t you go get a life and stop worrying about mine?”

Kate grins sadly and points to her stomach. “I’ve got one growing inside me. Isn’t that enough?”

The next door neighbor is mowing the grass. The motorized hum is a nice distraction from the somber mood they share. Kate looks at her watch. Gray wonders when the nurse will leave, suddenly remembering the cream for Liz’s rash, at the pharmacy.

“We forgot to pick up her prescription,” Kate says.

“She’s almost out of Gatorade. I can run by the store on the way to the pharmacy this afternoon.”

Kate suddenly remembers something. “Can you drive her to the hospital next week?”

“For her CT?”

“Yep. I have a prenatal appointment. But, I’ll be in the area; I can get her another one of those electric throw blankets that she likes so much…”

“One for upstairs and one for down?”

“Exactly.”

Kate shakes her head and chuckles. Her hair falls in her face, her eyes closing slightly.  “What’s going to become of us once she’s gone?

Kate looks at Gray, and he looks back, both searching for an answer from the other. Kate rubs her slightly bulbous stomach pensively and Gray tries to imagine a life not revolving around Liz. Unfathomable, he decides sadly.

At five, the nurse leaves the house and Joey calls from the door: “You guys can come in now,” he says. His face is ancient with saddness. “We need to talk.”

Saturday, Liz asked to be moved to the living room. The only television in the house is on, but she isn’t watching. Instead, she stares out the window, lost in the undiluted blue of the early summer sky. She doesn’t have long; Joey reported the day before, out of ear-shot, even though the nurse had heavily sedated her, the pain too much, she finally gave in to the comfort of oblivious sleep.

Saturday morning, she was better, but unplugged herself and asked to be moved downstairs, to sit by the window. Joey carried her, Gray watching pitifully from the bottom of the stairs. In the late-afternoon sun, Gray can see death settling over her. She is peaceful and painfully beautiful, her skin almost porcelain in the light, her eyes reflecting the clear color in the sky.

The house is quiet. Kate is napping on the couch. Joey is locked away, the report the day before causing a fresh wave of denial, of fruitless searching on the World Wide Web. Gray sits in the corner and quietly strums his guitar.

               “Do you still play at the Blue Dog Saloon?” Liz asks him. Gray is afraid because, despite being unhooked, she is no longer in pain. Her expression is clear, free of fear. She has spent most of the day in quiet recollection.

               Gray nods.

               “I remember the first night I met you.” Liz continues to stare out window. She smiles and her pallid face is transformed. “You were playing a gig at the bar that night.” She sighs wistfully. “You were magnificent.”

               He yearned to tell her the same, her magnificent face illuminated in the residual spotlight. He hadn’t realized at the time that she was sitting next to his brother, who was lost in the dark shadow of the club; that she was the girl he had never met, but heard a lot about. Joey had called her, ‘the one’. Gray didn’t know he was coming to the show, didn’t know the girl who caught his eye, the girl he fell in love with at first sight, was soon to be his sister-in-law. Instead he says, “You were sitting at the table, center left.”

               “It was my idea to see you play. Joey had told me what a talented musician you were, but I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see you play before I met you. He put off our introduction for a long time.” She turns her head, and looks at him, her green eyes serious.

               Gray’s breath is caught in his throat. “I remember.”

She is looking at him in a way she never has, brazened with dying. Her voice is flat. “He didn’t want me to meet you, you know.”

               Gray doesn’t react. His fingers pluck the strings, a song he wrote for her.

               Liz sighs and looks away, closing her eyes. She leans her head against the window pane and smiles. “Your song reminds me of swimming,” she says.

              

               Sunday, Liz is swimming. Against all protest, logic and better judgment, Kate strips off Liz’s gown. Besides the purple and black bruises on her arms from the tubes from the chemo, her back is clear, her skin a milky opalescent, blue veins at the surface, her spine knobby and protruding. Her breasts are shockingly round and buoyant, the only revealing trace of youth. Other than her breasts, it is hard to determine whether she is old or young. She is hairless, shapeless but graceful. She is dying, she is smiling, elated with excitement, her eyes reflecting the color of the water, of the sky.

               Gray and Joey hold her up as Kate slips the rubber, yellow floaties up her arms, past her elbows. With trepidation, Joey and Gray release her into the water and are silent with surprise as Liz’s arm rises and falls, a perfect stroke in the calm, clear water. It is a miracle, Gray marvels. She is swimming.

               Kate quietly slips off her dress. She glides into the water, rolling over onto her back. She strokes in sync with Liz; Liz who is dying, Liz who is smiling, Liz who is swimming, one lap, and then another, effortlessly. Her body is ravaged, every bone stretching out skin, protruding, creating a shape that is both ghastly and wonderfully pure.

               She looks like a baby, Gray thinks. Undeveloped, unformed. The beginning. He watches, witnessing her transformation, her acceptance, the smile taking hold of her entire face, her entire being. She is dying, she is smiling, she is swimming, and Gray starts to believe that maybe as she dies, she will begin again. And in a single moment of clarity, Gray considers that maybe the same could be true of him.

               On Monday, Gray cancels his show at the Blue Dog Saloon.