The Death Bed

  “It’s not a coincidence is it?” Julia began to ask, but Abraham was nodding his head in agreement before she said a word.

  “He got that boy’s name an’ my character. Maybe I should’ve named him Abraham. He would a’ been better off if the two’d been flip flopped. ‘Cept Abraham’s not exactly a popular name these days. But that’s enough ‘bout that nonsense. So what’d you think?”

  “About what?”

  “The book.”

  “It had a lot of really interesting stories,” Julia offered.

  “Is that all? Just intrestin’ stories.”

  “I guess that’s all. Some of them aren’t exactly plausible.”

  “If it’s just a bunch a’ good stories I don’t know that I’ve got much use fer it. I’ve got plenty a’ interestin’ stories in my westerns. You might as well take it back with you an’ give it ta someone else or somethin’.”

  Julia didn’t know if he was serious, but didn’t get up from the chair. Abraham took the book in his hand and extended it out towards her. She didn’t take it from him.

  “You guess that’s all,” Abraham began again, as if mocking her answer. “I guess I was hopin’ it would have more than really interestin’ stories, but maybe that’s all it will ever have fer you an’ me. It makes good sense that that’s all it’d be fer us. I was just hopin’.” Abraham trailed off and was silent for a second. “But fer that boy it was like he was breathing in life when he read that book. It was like somethin’ mystical came out a’ that book when he read it, an’ that was what made him strong when we were ridin’ him so hard; it made him strong when we were so rotten ta him an’ it made him strong ta be quiet while he was dyin’ so as to save the rascaly lot a’ us. But I figure it makes sense that fer you an’ me it’d only have interestin’ stories.”

  He paused, waiting for Julia to ask what he meant, but she didn’t say a word so he continued. “I guess without faith all those stories wouldn’t ‘mout to a hill a’ beans and faith’s somethin’ I aint been able ta muster in quite a long while. He’d a’ been better off with my name an’ that boy’s faith. Well go on an’ take it.”

  He held the book out to her again with a new insistence, and Julia took it from him reluctantly.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to read it?” she asked timorously.

  “I’m layin’ here on my death bed an’ I was hopin’ fer somethin mystical ta come out a’ that book fer me like it did fer that boy. I was hopin’ fer somethin’ mystical ta come out an’ make me strong like it did fer him, ‘cause layin’ here in this bed I know I’m goin’ ta die soon, an’ I know I can’t do it silently like that boy. The way you die matters a lot you know. Maybe it matters more than anythin’ else you do in your whole life. Lyin’ here I got ta thinkin’ that I wanted ta die like that boy an’ I knew I couldn’t do it ‘cause I’m afraid, an’ that boy wasn’t afraid a’ nothin’.” Abraham’s eyes closed and his head turned back over on the pillow. He continued speaking but Julia couldn’t make out his words.

  “Maybe it’s not too late fer an ol’ fart ta get a second chance an’ turn things around,” he said looking back at her. “But I can’t without somethin’ mystical, an’ I can’t get that without faith, an’ I don’t have faith, an’ it’s not the kind a’ thing you can just muster up inside a’ you.”

  “You said that already,” Julia pointed out politely.

  “I guess I did. I’m just rambling now. You go on now. I’m not in a talkin’ mood. You’re a good girl. Better than an old man like me deserves. You’ll come back tomorrow afternoon? I’ll be in a talkin’ mood then, an’ there’s somethin’ important I want ta tell you.” The tone of these last sentences seemed to fall somewhere between a question and a plea.

  “But tomorrow I’ve got,” Julia began, but changed her mind. “I’ll come. Don’t worry. I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon.” Julia got up and began to leave.

  “Maybe ‘round six o’clock?” Abraham added as she opened the door.

  “At six on the dot.”

  “You’re a good girl. Better than I deserve.”

  * * *

  “If the doctors are right, is this really how you want to spend your evening?” Abigail prompted. Her enthusiasm poured through the telephone. “You’ve got to hold on and take charge of your life. Get out and live it up.”

  “What difference does it make?” Hannah objected.

  “You can’t pass these days working all night, and then talking to me on the phone. Buy yourself a new dress and go out someplace. You owe it to yourself to have a good time. It’s your right, especially after everything you sacrificed to get to where you are.”

  “I think that I’m worse off now than I was four months ago. I can’t sleep at nights. I’m always lying in bed wondering if this is how it’s going to end up for me.”

  “Don’t start talking like that!” Abigail said forcefully. “You’ve got to believe in those doctors. Medicine can work miracles these days you know.”

  “That’s what I hear, but miracles aren’t something that I’ve ever had a lot of faith in.”

  “It’s not like we’re talking about mystical hocus-pocus miracles, these are scientific facts, proven and documented, something you can really trust. But you’ve got to believe in it too.”

  “If it’s only science then I’ll let the doctors do their work and wait to see how it turns out. I don’t feel like I can get my hopes up when the odds aren’t in my favor.”

  “You’ve got to believe. That’s your part.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “The placebo effect. Your body reacts to your optimism. I don’t know how well they understand it medically yet, but every study shows that it works. That’s what faith boils down to. If you have faith in medical science you’ll be okay. And in the meantime it’s still early enough for you to go out and buy yourself a new dress and hit the town.”

  “I’m pushing fifty. I don’t feel up to a night on the town,” Hannah moaned.

  “It doesn’t matter how you feel. You need to get out there. Once you’re having a good time you’ll feel up to it.”

  “It feels like the wrong thing. That part of my life’s already passed me by. Who goes to a club looking to pick up someone in their mid-forties?”

  “This is the 21st century,” Abigail countered. “Guys in their mid-forties go out looking to pick up women in their mid-forties. You’re not the only one out there coming off an ugly breakup.”

  “I’ll go,” Hannah conceded.

  She hung up the phone and the thought snuck into her head, “It was more than a breakup.” But she liked that word better than the other. She didn’t have any problem justifying a new dress, not after the fire, and everything else that she’d lived through the past few months.

  Chapter 3

  Thomas pulled into his father’s apartment complex a few minutes after five o’clock on Friday afternoon.

  “I thought this was temporary,” he said as Peter opened the door and let him in. The walls were bare, and cardboard boxes sat in the corner of the living room. The only furniture was a couch that looked like it had been drug in from the dumpster, and a television stand that displayed the big screen television—another family relic that managed to survive the fire.

  “It is temporary,” Peter replied.

  “It’s been several months now,” Thomas pointed out.

  “Still waiting on the insurance money to come through.”

  “That’s what I hear. So what do you want to do?”

  “I was on my way out to see your grandfather, but afterwards I thought we could catch a basketball game. I’ve got tickets.”

  “Great,” Thomas sighed. “I drive all the way down here and get to go to the nursing home.”

  “It’s just for a few minutes.”

  Peter grabbed his coat, and Thomas struggled to get up from the couch that had ensnared him.

  Thomas mentioned that the process of getting up from the c
ouch made sitting down more trouble than it was worth.

  “I know, but it’s all temporary,” Peter replied.

  * * *

  Peter and Thomas entered the nursing home. It was Thomas’s first time to walk through those doors. He noticed that the receptionist was cute, and that the bodies that occupied the chairs in the entryway looked more like holocaust victims than human beings, each face filled to the brim with emptiness. He began to understand.

  “This is all life comes to,” he muttered. Peter didn’t hear him. Thomas examined the nothingness that seemed to consume everyone around him. Looking into those faces he could taste the fruit of everything that he’d sown in recent months, and standing in the presence of that palpable emptiness, he knew that everything he’d suspected was right. He promised himself that if he ever experienced an ounce of happiness, and that happiness made him want to believe that goodness and purpose might exist in the universe, if it made him want to renounce everything he’d come to believe, he would remember those empty faces. Those faces would always remind him of what life amounts to in the end, and the memory of them would give him fortitude to hold firm to his course. He continued to survey each face as he passed them in the hallway, following his father into his grandfather’s room.

  “I heard that the doctor was here,” Peter offered when they’d entered the room. Abraham didn’t respond. “Do you know what he wanted?” Peter asked after a few moments of silence. Abraham coughed several times before speaking.

  “He wanted ta know how it was that I was still holdin’ on.”

  Thomas who had been silent up until then couldn’t help asking, “What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anythin’. I just looked at him with my most spiteful look ‘cause I knew he didn’t care a lick ‘bout me. He was wantin’ ta write somethin’ clever in one a’ those journals. He should a’ been offended by the way I didn’t answer him, but he didn’t have the sense ta know that I wasn’t answerin’ out a’ spite. He just wrote me off as senile an’ went on his way.”

  “But, how?” Thomas asked. “How are you still holding on? All the doctors are baffled.”

  “How am I holdin’ on? I’ll tell you how. I aint holdin’ on. When he put me here,” Abraham stopped speaking long enough to motion toward Peter. “When he put me here I didn’t want ta hold on any longer. I wanted ta die an’ have this whole affair people call life done an’ over with. ‘Cause what I had out there don’t hardly deserve ta be called life, an’ this most certainly didn’t. I’d only started ta learn what life should’ve been when he yanked me away an’ put me here. Then I just let go. Funny how that all works out. I let go a’ life an’ that’s when it sneaks up an’ finds me, an’ that made me want ta find out what it was supposed ta be ‘bout, ‘cause I figured I got an extension fer a reason. There’s got ta be a reason fer me not bein’ dead yet ‘cause everythin’s got a reason. Lots a’ people let go an’ don’t get nothin’ out a’ it, just emptiness in their open hand. But I let go a’ life an’ it sneaks up on me, an’ there’s got ta be a reason fer it.

  “Maybe there isn’t a reason,” Thomas suggested. “Maybe everything occurs randomly without purpose. Some people die when they want to live, and other people live when they want to die, and everyone passes through this world without any purpose or meaning. Everyone wastes their time asking what the meaning of life is, but maybe there is no meaning.”

  “Thomas!” Peter said in a hushed yet harsh tone.

  “Maybe he’s right,” Abraham said. “I haven’t found nothin’ worth livin’ fer. But that’s not what I was wantin’ ta talk ‘bout.”

  “What did you want to talk about?” Peter asked.

  “I wanted to wait ‘till she got here.”

  “Who?” Thomas asked.

  “Her.”

  Peter turned around to see Julia standing in the open doorway and tried to remember when he’d seen her last. Julia was equally surprised when she saw her father and brother in the room. She took a step back, and Peter noticed the confused look that she shot at Abraham who, was either laughing or coughing.

  Peter wanted to ask his daughter how long she’d been standing in the doorway, but he refrained, composed himself, and turned back to the bed. What did you want to talk about?”

  “I made some changes,” Abraham said.

  “What kind of changes.” Anxiety crept into Peter’s face. He felt certain that the old man knew everything that had happened. “How did he find out?” he wondered. “Did she tell him? Maybe she told him for the sole purpose of coaxing him into making the changes in her favor.” He pushed the thought out of his mind; he knew that she would never do that. Not his little angel—how long had it been since he’d thought of her like that? “I’m overreacting,” he told himself. “I’m jumping to conclusions.”

  Julia stepped across the threshold and approached the bed. “What are you talking about Grandpa?”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know.” The words blurted out of Peter’s mouth. They surprised him as much as they did his daughter. Abraham didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” Peter said abruptly. “I don’t know what came over me. It’s been a long day, and the stress of all these changes caught up with me.” The lie came naturally, as if Peter himself wasn’t even aware of the fact that the entire statement was fabricated. He’d spent the last day, the last four months, trying to convince himself that nothing had changed, and the façade had become his reality.

  Julia didn’t acknowledge the outburst. She knelt down by the bed and took her grandfather’s hand. “What’s going on?”

  “I made some changes,” he said.

  “Changes to what?” Julia asked. Her voice trembled. The uncertainty seemed genuine, maybe even too genuine. Peter remembered how well she’d performed last year in To Kill a Mockingbird, and studied her body language.

  “I changed my will. Had a lawyer come by the day ‘fore yesterday an’ got the whole thing singed up an’ legal.”

  Peter could no longer maintain his composure. “What did you change?”

  “Just changed some a’ the wordin’.”

  “What wording?”

  Julia now noticed the urgency in her father’s voice. All of her attention had been directed toward Abraham since she’d entered the room, but now, as if coming out of a trance, she noticed her father’s frantic state. She stared at him with wide eyes, horrified by the desperate expression that overcame him.

  Abraham went on calmly, “I made her my chief beneficiary.”

  Julia’s attention jerked back toward the bed. Peter took a step back and bumped into Thomas, whom he’d completely forgotten about. The shock was only momentary. He stepped forward, grabbed Julia’s shoulder, and forcefully turned her body to face his own.

  “You told him. You told him on purpose so you could steal my money,” he shouted at her.

  “Please, I don’t know what’s going on. Let go. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Julia tried to wiggle free but her father held on tightly. He raised his free hand, and Thomas jumped forward, grabbing his father’s wrist. Peter let go of Julia and turned his attention to his son.

  “Don’t get involved in this Thomas. I’m your father.”

  Thomas let go and stepped back. Abraham had been coughing violently and finally composed himself enough to speak.

  “What is it you’re thinkin’ she told me?” he asked.

  “Don’t try to protect her. I know she told you about me, and about what happened with Hannah. I know she told you, and then she tricked you into giving her all your money.”

  “That’s the first time you talked ta me like I was a real person in quite a while,” Abraham noted.

  Peter looked around the room. His daughter was curled up on the floor in the corner formed by the bed and the adjacent wall. She wasn’t crying, but her confused look pierced him. Thomas stood just a few feet away with a fire in his expression, as if he was waiting for the chance to intervene again. Abraham lay i
n the bed, just like always. Peter looked back at his daughter and abruptly turned around and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Nobody moved for several seconds. Then Julia brought herself up to a kneeling position by the bed. “What about Luke? What about David and Thomas and Lewis? Why me?”

  Thomas sat down in the chair that his father had been sitting in and waited for a response.

  “’Cause you’re the only one I trust.”

  “Trust for what?” Julia asked.

  “Ta use it ta do good.”

  “What do you mean by good?” Thomas interjected.

  “I don’t rightly know what I mean. But I trust her ta know, or at least ta figure it out.”

  Julia shot a worried look at Thomas then looked back at her grandfather. “But you know all about what I’ve, what’s happened with me. You know I’m not a good person. Even if what I did isn’t wrong I thought it was and I did it anyway.”

  “I know what you are, and I know what I’m doin’. Now why don’t you two go on your way? All this excitement’s a bit much fer these old bones.”

  Julia started to object again, but Abraham had already turned his head away and closed his eyes. Thomas put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Let’s go.”

  She let him help her up, and the two left together. When they were safely in the hallway Thomas muttered something about how senile the old man had gotten.

  “What’d you say?” Julia asked.

  “Nothing. But if I ever get to that point just shoot me. If I have any say in the matter I’d much rather die while I’m young, healthy, and in my right mind.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Julia objected.

  “Yes, I do. I’d much rather die young than end up like that.”

  “Thomas, stop talking like that,” Julia said.

  “I’m sorry if reality offends you, but you’ve got to face the facts. Nobody wants to end up like him.”

  “Let’s change the subject. I’m hungry; do you want to get something to eat?”

  * * *

  Hannah put aside the pile of papers she’d brought home from the office. She’d spent the last hour and a half sorting through them, but hadn’t been able to focus enough to actually buckle down and get to work. Every time she tried she found her mind would wander to a legal matter that was far more pressing, or at least more personal. She would get up and meander into the living room or kitchen, make a cup of coffee or tea, or just sit for a time in silence before forcing herself to go back and try again to work on the documents. After repeating this process several times she couldn’t avoid reality any longer, and she accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to get any of her work done until she’d addressed the problem that had been running around in her mind for months now.