Many Deaths

He texted Billy to meet him at the bar round seven. Billy's response was terse, 'K'.

A lump had been set in his throat for a while now and was, he had noticed, linked to his increasingly fragile psychological state. Any slightest hurdle in social or moral interaction set this thing alive and made him want to puke, then cry. This single syllable 'K' from Billy was just the sort of trivial perturbation to set it off, jumping like a bean in his esophagus.

He called Marci. Told her how much he loved her, missed her, and wished he would see her tonight; but, work. Marci, sounding strong, reassured him she was doing fine, and that she and Ms. Ravel were going to play cards tonight anyhow. She told him not to work too hard, and to treat himself to a drink when he got home. He repeated that he loved her, set the phone down, and wept dry sobs into his sleeve.

Billy got to Jay's Tavern at 7:30 and did not take off his jacket when he sat. Nor did he touch his beer. A muted buzzing came from his hindquarters; he yanked out his phone and explained that Chelsea was texting him. The angle at which he held the phone suggested he was trying to keep the screen from view.

'Anything wrong?'

'What are you doing here Mel? This is five nights this week. Your Wife's in the hospital; go and see her.'

When Billy left, Mel sat wringing his fingers and ordering a succession of drinks, assimilating the intensity of his friend's condemnation. The criticism was overdue, and perhaps even welcome; the strain of the unspoken was becoming unbearable.

'I'm not afraid of death,' he had countered Billy's assumption keenly expressed (how long had he and Chelsea been talking about this?). 'I'm afraid of seeing her die. Do you know she weighs 82 lbs. 82 lbs. She doesn't even look like Marci anymore.'

'But she is, and she's your wife, and she needs you. I don't want to be out here part of this any more. I can't make you see her, but I can refuse to be your distraction.'

Mel sat, wringing his fingers, playing over the wedding band that Marci had spent almost a year tracking down. Made of scotch barrel wood; Bunnahabhain, choice drink of his ever since a trip to the Islay region taken three years before they were married and six months after they'd met. She'd called him a pompous arse after he'd returned stateside and talked nothing but Scotch for weeks. Let it sit. Just a few drops will open it up. The market has absolutely obliterated age statements. And so on. He knew he was a pompous arse, and she'd had a smile when saying it.

Now, he hadn't seen her in over a week, and wondered what new surprise had twisted the visage of his once beautiful wife. Her eyes had been so swollen last time, emerging from the emaciation like balloons. He'd been so frightened they might just burst or squirt from the sockets that he could think of nothing else during the short visit and had been turned in his bedside chair half away from her. Her condition had worsened since, and surely the eyes would be even more distended.

But the grotesqueries were many. Her weight, her incontinence, the sores developed on her back. The constant feed of liquids into her arms and chest. The darkened quality of her teeth when she opened her mouth which he had no explanation for. He could not stand to see his wife, an item, a category in and of herself, transformed this way into something altogether different. It was wrong, unjust. In fact all the irrational lamentation which was normally reserved for the moribund, Mel found himself weeping over, raging about, asking of the universe. Why me, he tossed and turned throughout the night, throwing it into the inert ether. Why me.

As he drank, he thought. Marci had sounded strong on the phone. Perhaps she'd gained some weight back, he embarked on a mission of self persuasion. The yoke in his throat jostled with shame. He readily thought of himself as pathetic and regularly resolved to be stronger. Now was such a moment for self-damning as he slid in drunken fashion from the booth shedding dollars for his drinks. I'll get her flowers. I'll get her flowers, some chocolate, and pay her a visit. He sent a text message, with hearts and smiles, that he'd see her soon.

Early on, in response to the first plunge into that merciless valley of the dying, he'd sought therapeutic treatises on the subject, hoping for either fortification or comfort. He had dragged his finger over the spines of books named things like 'Grief and You', 'The way we look', and 'Death is a Visual Medium' (this one featuring a disturbing Gericault on its front), occasionally pulling a volume and flicking through the pages blindly. He got nothing from this exercise, but neither had he given it an honest go, feeling self conscious and foolish. You're at a library, he'd thought to himself, who goes to a library.

He had also made a fumbling, intoxicated, confession to Ms. Ravel. I can't work, I can barely sleep. I don't know if I can do this. Her response was a much served cocktail of knowing and nuh-uh'edness. 'You gotta get over that right now,' she told him, 'your wife don't need that at this time'. He felt lame and sorry for himself, and far from set right. As Marci had become more and more ill, descending that spiral staircase, he found he could not follow to hold her hand. The hand would be unrecognizable by now, and papery. He'd called Marci's mother once, intending to explain how hard he was finding life, before thinking better of it and hurriedly hanging up while the phone still rang. Pondering the dearth sympathy he was receiving, it occurred to him a book might one day be due, highlighting the plight of The Forgotten Partner.

Chocolate and flowers, he reminded himself out in the cool, bracing air. At this time of night he figured it'd have to be a corner shop, specializing in liquor. Nothing else would be open. So he went to Bonfaire on main; a place they had frequented as a couple for the late night champagne, or chips, or contraception (always his anxiety, never her's). The chocolate selection was weak; Kit Kats, Whoppers, a Hershey bar with nuts, bent and chewed up – probably fingered by some tweaker, he figured. Milky Ways. Well it did look cheap, but at least she liked Milky Ways. He grabbed two, choking back any doubt that she would be able to eat them. He shut his eyes, and leaned heavily on the shelving for a second, and as one might force back a rush of nausea, he forced back the sudden thought of the suffering of his wife; the graphic sensory quality of it. He would have to be an audience for it in seventeen minutes, depending on traffic lights. In that sterile room, with its alien smell and dank electric lighting.

The cashier, a small and severe middle eastern man, gave him no comfort; tersely indicating he needed to flip his card and swipe again, and offering no bag. As Mel bundled the chocolate bars and roses into his clumsy arms the man had already turned away to resume a foreign conversation in his earpiece. A vibration and chirp. Marci had texted back; 'Party!', hearts, smiles, and confetti.

A quick biological stop at home was necessary. They lived in midtown, a small Victorian shoved against a bagel shop. It had a small second floor balcony with a rocking chair on which still sat the novel Marci was reading the night she had had the episode, was attended to by a score of frantic EMT (he'd never seen EMT frantic before), and was rushed to the hospital which would almost certainly be her final residence. Inside the home; stasis. The air was still and meaty; it clung to itself, as if holding its own breathe. Her small unfinished paintings were piled on the living room floor, where she'd left them, giving off the sharp alcoholic whiff of turpentine. The easel -- Mel's gift for her 42nd birthday -- by the window, paint rag hanging from its cross bar. Fruit flies had gathered around her last tea mug. She had asked him to bring this mug into the hospital a month ago; he'd forgotten, remembered and forgotten again many times over.

Mel bypassed the heart wrecking paraphernalia of their once normal life, going instead straight to the upstairs toilet. He sat on the bowl and glared emptily into the home screen of his phone. Phone, he kept saying to himself. Phone. Why had the suffix remained. Why weren't they 'cells' or 'mobiles' or 'teles'. Why phones? Idle thoughts; his heart was thudding.

He had, over the course of his life, been a low level coward whose very rare instances of minor courage surprised him more than anybody. Evasions, prevarications and a kind of passive opportunism were innate to him, and vices he'd never found sufficient inspiration to resist. Marci had, among all else, lifted him to some degree from these faults. He'd felt courageous and daring with her. He wished now, in her absence, he had told her so more often. Wished he'd done so every day.

Perched on his porcelain, an idea of unfathomable magnitude resolved itself within him. It was something awful at which he could not look directly. But the thought, quite in contradiction to its crudeness, warmed him like a drug, bringing a sweet tingling relief. And he was calmed for the moment, though his hands shook.

Toilet flushing behind him, he changed his clothes, believing the scent of sweat and booze to be addling. He fumbled past the various hangings of Marci's; the lacy black dress which always titillated him, the pencil skirts she never wore and the loose, tan Harems she always did. Her shoes in a messy stack which had to be held upright as he reached for his own clothes. The soft memory of her perfume. When had she last worn it? Bach, convention center, last anniversary. He could still smell it.

Creeping back downstairs, like a stranger, he refused to turn as he moved quickly through the hall to avoid catching a glimpse of the living room again. He believed if he did, she would be there, on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and watching a movie with those vital eyes. And he couldn't bear to have this belief dashed. So he went out the front door, vision set forward.

The interstates extruding at all angles from Cleveland are empty places in the middle of the night. You might go miles without seeing a fellow traveler. Late spring would bring storms that could force you to the side of the road, but in the early autumn they were peaceable conveyors on which one could lose oneself in thought. And this was precisely what Mel didn't want. He didn't want solitude and quiet, couldn't survive it. He half-swore through thick lips, and his eyes stung from fatigue. Self pity; there like a hangover, was nibbling at his constitution. Jesus, he thought, trying to grip the steering wheel until it hurt, is sobbing all there is to life.

The sign for Exit 2B rolled past, hanging off the concrete edge of an over-passing freeway. He averted his gaze.

Up ahead a red F150 brought its hefty caboose into the lane on his right.

His throat's tenant, that accusatory lump, was awake again, pulling at the back of his tongue. He applied some pressure to the pedal and switched on the FM; sport, fine. The F150 was swaying, encroaching on his lane, then drifting off to the far side, then back again. Mel leaned forward trying to catch a glimpse of the inebriated driver in it's side view mirror. The smear of midnight lighting prevented this. He half hoped to be killed in an accident.

Second to next, the exit was approaching; sign for the hospital, blue. Out of the corner of his eye Mel saw his phone light up. A message. He looked straight forward, tapping this thumb in agitation, feeling an uncomfortable heat building in his colon.

Next exit, one half mile. Tap, tap, tap.

Then there it went.

And beyond, in his periphery, the unresolved nightscape. A twinkle of lights was what could be seen of that enormous complex; the hospital where Marci was waiting, hair fixed, in her bed, playing cards with Ms. Ravel who would soon be excusing herself for the night.

Mel could finally relax and his grip softened on the wheel. The lump in his throat lapsed, settling down to a small, maleficent pit just above his gut.

He pressed on the pedal again and roared past the Ford. The driver opened his window and hooted. Mel cracked his own window. He chucked his phone, the flowers and the chocolate onto the interstate. He drove through the night, leaving Ohio behind, knowing he could never come back.