THEY HAD BEEN WATCHING Saturday football for some time—or rather, Margaret had been watching while Miles slept on the living-room couch—when suddenly Margaret called out, and he woke to see his mother slumped in her chair, her mouth open, her head tilted to the side.
"I can't get a pulse," Margaret said.
Miles froze on the couch, looking. So this is it, he thought, this is death. And for a second—for less than a second—his heart beat faster and something opened inside his mind and he was about to think, At last, but he refused to give the thought entry. "Oh no," he said.
"I can't get anything," Margaret said.
"Let me try," Miles said, and at once he was on his knees, beside her, his fingers on her wrist and then on her neck. "She's breathing," he said, "I've got a pulse. Feel." And he touched Margaret's fingers to the spot on Eleanor's neck where, faintly, a pulse continued to beat.
"I'll call the ambulance," Miles said. "I'll call the doctor."
The ambulance would be there at once. Dr. Archer's answering service promised to do what they could to reach her. Again Miles felt his mother's pulse; it was the same.
"Stay with her for a second," Miles said. He dashed to his room and changed from his jeans and sweatshirt to his new wool pants, with a jacket and tie. Hospital workers were all snobs, he knew, and they'd give his mother better care if he looked like somebody. That's just how it was.
The ambulance pulled up, and in minutes they had Eleanor on a stretcher and, with lights flashing, were racing down the through-way and into the narrow streets of Cambridge until they slowed nearly to a crawl as they reached downtown Boston. Then it was one delay after another as they fought traffic and road repairs and construction machinery and crowds of pedestrians who feared and respected nothing, not even an ambulance. Finally, on the periphery of the Combat Zone, they reached New England Medical and his mother was rushed into Emergency.
Miles paced for a while and then he sat, waiting. Margaret had followed in her car and now she joined him in Emergency and they waited together, silent.
No one came and no one left. A black woman held her small child in her arms, crooning to him, and every so often he would whimper. In a corner of the room, turned away from the others, an elderly man who looked like a derelict sat hugging his chest. He rocked back and forth in his chair, and when he paused for a minute and lifted one arm from his side, Miles saw a huge splotch of blood on his shirt, as if he'd been stabbed in the chest. There were others: two little boys, albino twins, with a teenage girl who looked to be their babysitter; an elderly woman who sat bent nearly in two; a pregnant woman with a stained washcloth she kept pressing to the side of her head. No one spoke. No one complained. It was a scene from Kafka, Miles thought.
"It's going to be all right," Margaret said after a while, and she put her hand lightly on his knee.
He was thinking about that tiny moment of relief when he had thought Eleanor was dead. He hated himself for that. His eyes stung, and he turned to Margaret quickly, so she would see his tears, if there were any.
"I loved her," he said.
"I know. I know," Margaret said.
An hour passed.
While he was growing up, Miles had never gotten along with his mother. She had preferred Erin in everything; it was as if Miles had committed some unforgivable act in being born male. But in this past year and a half, now that his mother was dying, they seemed to have reached an understanding. She often gave him a look that was not forgiveness, really; it was a look that said there was nothing to forgive. And sometimes she seemed to want forgiveness for herself. It was an odd mixture of love and resentment they shared, and they both knew it.
Miles went to the glass booth and stood there. The nurse was studying a long sheet of names and times and cryptic abbreviations. After a while, she reached the end of the page, flipped to the next one, and looked up at him.
"Is there any news on my mother?" he asked. "They brought her in about an hour ago?"
"We'll let you know," she said, and smiled, returning at once to her sheets of figures.
"She's an elderly woman? Eleanor Bannon, her name is?"
"We'll let you know," she said, and she did not look up.
"They'll let us know," Miles said to Margaret, and made one of his faces. She smiled and took his hand.
Another hour passed.
"I'll get you some coffee," Margaret said. "Would you like coffee?"
"We should get lunch, actually," Miles said. "But it seems awfully callous, doesn't it." He looked at the glass booth where a new nurse had come on duty. "I'll give it another try," he said, but this nurse was even less approachable than the first. She had dyed red hair and tiny eyes, and she looked like she had just smelled something foul.
"If we had new information," she said, "we would have given it to you." She gave him a firm look.
Margaret left and brought back coffee and a sandwich, but Miles could not bring himself to eat it there, so they went outside and shared the sandwich, eating surreptitiously, as they walked up and down in front of the hospital. Then they went inside, to wait. The twin boys had disappeared.
After another hour, Miles approached the glass booth and asked apologetically if there were any information yet. It was the nurse with the dyed red hair, and she squinted hard at Miles.
"Name?"
He gave his mother's name and address, the doctor's name, the reason for her being in Emergency, and then his own name.
"She's not here," the nurse said, checking her charts. "She was brought up to Intensive Care a good hour ago. You'll have to enquire at the front desk."
"But is she all right?"
"We're very busy here, sir." She squinted at him as the corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile. "Front desk," she said.
Miles and Margaret had been waiting outside Intensive Care for only a few minutes when Dr. Archer approached them. She shook hands with them, briskly, and said, "I'm sorry."
"Yes," Miles said.
"Of course," Margaret said.
"It's always strange with ALS," Dr. Archer said. "These things happen and we don't really know what they are. Strain on the heart, sometimes. Sometimes a kind of stroke, some cerebral accident that we can't explain. Sometimes, it's almost as if they can't endure the immobility any longer and they just let themselves go."
"They want to die?" Miles said.
"No, not that. Not positive volition; just non-resistance. It is, as I say, a strange phenomenon. And with your mother, I just don't know. She's not up to a CAT scan yet, or an encephalogram; she's much too weak. And I wouldn't advise an arteriogram at all, because in her condition it could actually precipitate a stroke. So there are certain things we can't rule out and there are others she's not well enough to allow us to test for."
"But she is dying," Miles said, as if he wanted confirmation.
Dr. Archer looked at him sharply.
"She doesn't want any extraordinary means taken, is all," Miles said. "She doesn't want to be kept alive by machines."
"She was always very clear about that," Margaret said.
Dr. Archer gestured toward the door to Intensive Care. "You can stay a minute or two," she said. "One visitor at a time. She's the third bed over."
Miles was struck first by the near-darkness of the room and then by the pervasive noise. He could make no sense of the glistening metal, the plastic bags with fluid, the dark forms moving in the distance. There were, perhaps, no more than twelve beds, but in the dim light they seemed to stretch out beyond his field of vision, and in each of them lay someone in pain. Men and women side by side, a child, another child, a near-skeleton, and all of them exposed in their agony, indecent. Some had needles in their arms. Some had tubes in their noses and mouths, with other tubes collecting wastes in bottles underneath the beds. There were moans of pain, muffled crying, the hard rasp of labored breathing, and, beneath these sounds, the constant low hum of machines that performed the work of living for bodies that had nearly given up.
Confused, frightened, Miles at first could not find his mother's bed. And then he saw her. She was propped up at a sharp angle, and a young nurse bent above her, a tube in her hand. The tube ran from a metal case on the floor, with a bottle and a motor attached. Miles watched as the nurse eased the tube into his mother's mouth, and pushed it gently, and then flicked a switch behind her. At once the machine came to life, with a choking sound, and the nurse moved the tube gently inside his mother's mouth, and then her throat, pushing it slowly downward. He could hear it sucking up phlegm, a gargling sound, terrible. His mother's body convulsed and the nurse pulled away, but kept the tube moving in her throat until that gargling sound died away and there was only the hum of the machine itself. The nurse winced, and drew the tube out slowly. With care, she wiped his mother's mouth, then looked at her. Slowly, she shook her head.
Miles moved toward the bed and looked at his mother. She was gray. Her head was thrown back and her mouth was open; she drew breath in short harsh gasps. So it was nearly over. For her sake, he was relieved.
The nurse became aware of Miles and, looking up at him, she whispered, "You're not supposed to be in here. Who let you in?" She raised her voice. "You are not supposed to be in here."
Miles nodded, and left the room quickly.
They were waiting again.
They had been waiting for hours in the lounge outside Intensive Care, and now, hungry at last, they decided to go get something to eat.
It was nearly eight, just beginning to get dark, and there was almost nobody in the street and very little traffic. But as they walked, silent, they passed a derelict and then some kids looking to score drugs. They saw two women who might be prostitutes. The women interested Miles because they looked like any other women, except that these seemed to be available. One of them stared him straight in the eyes as she passed. They saw another derelict. A long blue Cadillac pulled up to the curb in front of them, and they watched as a man in a black suit got out and somebody inside, whom they could not see, handed him a small TWA travel bag. He took it and, tucking it under his arm, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared beneath a marquee that said Girls Girls Girls. At once there was loud music and the lights on the marquee lit up, blinking Girls Girls Girls, off and on.
"God, what an area," Margaret said. "Combat Zone for sure," and she put her arm through his, stopping him. "Let's turn back, Miles. Please."
They turned back and Miles said nothing, because he would have been glad to keep on. Only a few people were around and the streets were nearly silent, but he could feel the place was just about to come alive. He wanted to see more. Anything could happen here. It was exhilarating.
For a moment, for the smallest part of a moment, he had completely forgotten his mother was dying.
They walked back toward the hospital, and passed it, and then they found a McDonald's. They ate quickly, talking very little, and when they had finished their cheeseburgers, Miles got them coffee, and Margaret said, "Take one of these." It was a tiny pink pill, the size of a pea. "It's only Xanax," she said. "It will help you relax."
"No," Miles said. "I don't like pills." And later, "Do you take those often?"
"No," she said.
"Did you take one last night? After I left?"
Margaret only looked at him.
"Well, you must have taken something. I thought maybe you'd had another drink or … well, you were so different when I phoned. It was like you were another person."
"What are you talking about? Why are you doing this, Miles?"
He felt he had done something wrong, and so he said, almost an apology: "When I called you last night? You asked me to call and say how Mother was? Because of Tillie?"
She looked at him with incomprehension.
"You don't remember. Do you."
"Oh yes," she said, in a light, high voice. "I may have had another drink. I was tired, and I wanted to be fresh for your mother this morning." She was looking beyond him. She might have been making smalltalk at a cocktail party. "It's not important, really. These things happen. Right?" She smiled in his direction.
Something about her frightened him and so he smiled back. He placed his hand on hers and smiled again. I don't know who she is, he thought. I don't know anything.
"We need some rest," he said. "Why don't you go home right now. Don't go back to the hospital. It's killing. It's too depressing. I'll phone you if anything happens. I'll wait a couple hours, then get a cab. You go on home, Margaret."
She walked with him back to the hospital and waited with him outside Intensive Care. There was nothing to say. There was nothing to do. They waited.
His mother remained the same, the nurse said. Why didn't they just go home? Get a little rest.
But it was not until eleven o'clock that Miles persuaded Margaret to leave the hospital. He would follow later. She kissed him goodbye, finally, and left.
Miles waited fifteen minutes, and then ten, and then he asked about his mother. She remained the same, the nurse said.
He paced the length of the corridor, and then again, and finally he took the elevator to the lobby. In the elevator, he made a pact with himself. If there were a cab at the door, he would take it straight home to Malburn. That was the deal. Straight home. He found himself hoping there would be no cab.
The elevator doors opened very slowly, and as he stepped out into the lobby, Miles could see the cab—its roof light on, the driver waiting—parked square in front of the entrance.
He went down the stairs, shook his head, no, at the cab driver, and set off walking to the Combat Zone.
It was another world. He could look around now and take it all in, but he was afraid to look around very much. What if someone saw him? There was only one reason to be in this part of town. He tried to walk casually, as if he were just out for a stroll.
He was on the same street he had walked earlier with Margaret, but it was a different place now. The derelicts were gone, there were more people—men—in the street, and the prostitutes looked different. These were pros, he could tell. They had on more makeup, their hair was deliberately wild, they wore short skirts of satin or leather, and they seemed to be on an invisible leash to some man who stood leaning against a wall or a doorpost or who sat slumped in a Cadillac or a Lincoln Town Car or a Mercedes. It was like Hollywood's version of a red light district, except these women were not attractive and the men did not look menacing.
There was traffic now, cars with men mostly, gawking or whistling, and some cars with tinted windows, and some that just moved quietly through the streets. And on the sidewalk there were young men, alone or in small nervous groups, eyeing the prostitutes or the posters slapped onto the brick walls, or stopping to look into one of the bars where there was loud music and smoke and men drinking and sometimes a yell or a laugh.
He came to the end of the street and looked right and then left. A police car tore by, its siren shrieking, and in the distance another siren made a whining sound, but nobody seemed to notice or care. They all seemed to belong in this place. Miles was the only one who looked around, guilty, but there was no place for hiding here. Everything was up front and brightly lit. Pussy Galore, a sign said, Naked, spelled out in lights. On Stage, Live. Miles slowed his pace. Flanking the entrance were life-sized photos, framed and under glass. A woman of at least forty, nude, with impossibly large breasts, crossed her legs and arched her back in a simulation of sexual frenzy. She was sitting on a little stool, and even with her back arched and her shoulders squared, her immense breasts billowed up and out and down, hanging nearly to her waist. Her name appeared in huge letters beneath the photo: Ineeda Mann. On the wall opposite there was a light-skinned black woman, Ginger Fox. She was young, no more than twenty surely, and she stood in profile, bending from the waist, so that her breasts—normal-sized, Miles noticed with relief—swung out in points. Her hands burrowed between her legs. Miles stopped for a second to get a better look, and at once a large black hand gripped his arm, and he heard, "You want some black pussy?" For a second he could not get his breath, and then he turned and looked up into the face of the largest black man he had ever seen.
"Thank you, no," Miles said, but as the man kept looking at him, he smiled formally, and said, as if he were addressing a salesman at his door, "Not interested, thank you."
"Boys?" the man asked. "Young? Nice fresh meat?"
"Good Lord, no!" Miles said, trying to free his arm from the man's grip. "No!"
"What're you, then? You some kind of crazy cop, dressed up like that? You from Omaha? What're you?"
"I'm … I just …" But the words would not come. "I'm in the wrong place," Miles said. "I shouldn't be here."
The man looked hard at Miles, and then he grinned, and the grin turned into a soft laugh. "First time," he said. "That's okay, man," and he released Miles' arm. "You-all come back and see us, now. Y'hear?"
Miles turned away from him and started back toward the hospital. Everything was different now, and real. It was filthy. Disgusting. He must have been insane to come here. With prostitutes and pimps. And dressed like this. He was wearing a tweed jacket, like a schoolteacher. And a shirt and tie! He must have been crazy.
He walked quickly, not looking around because he was sure everybody would be looking back at him. Laughing. But laughter was the least of it. Imagine if somebody had recognized him! He began to walk faster. It struck him finally that it was taking longer than it should to get back to the hospital, and so he paused for just a moment and looked up and down the street. At once he saw that he must have taken a wrong turn. He'd never been here before.
He retraced his steps to the corner, looked left, then right. Yes, down the street to his left was the marquee for Ineeda Mann, and beneath it, leaning against her photo, was the huge black man who had stopped him earlier.
"Hi, sweets," someone said behind him, a girlish voice, and then there were giggles as two young men came through an open door and brushed past him. "Love your tweeds," one of them said. They were convulsed by this and went off down the street, laughing, slapping at one another.
Miles was sick, he wanted to be out of here, but automatically he turned to see where they had come from, and found himself looking into a dark, smoky room. Hard rock was playing and for a second he caught the sound of glasses clinking and then a loud male laugh. He moved away from the door, and looked at the sign above it: "The Tom Cat Lounge," it said, and there was a picture of a black cat with its tail erect. So, this was it. A gay bar.
Miles moved away quickly, panic-stricken, and walked straight to the end of the street. He turned right, and walked some more, and there ahead of him, at last, he saw the hospital, and a cab to take him back to Malburn.
So, there was a merciful God after all. He had not been caught. He had not been seen.
In this, however, he was mistaken.
Miles had moved quickly from the open door of the Tom Cat Lounge, but not before Richy Polcari, who was standing by the jukebox bopping to the rhythm, turned away from the bar and saw in the doorway a guy who looked to him like Milo, only older and not so handsome. He reached for his drink, and when he took another look, the guy was gone.
Richy turned back to the bar, frowning so that he'd look a little older, squaring his shoulders to make his suit hang better. Milo, he thought, imagine that. Miles Bannon, in a gay bar.
And in the voice of the Church lady, Richy said, "Now, wouldn't that be special."
