All Over Creation (58 page)

Charmey sat up in bed in the pale violet room, holding the baby to her breast. Frankie lay next to her, watching the efficient way she pinched her nipple, tilting it upward and brushing it against the infant's cheek. His brand-new daughter knew exactly what to do. She opened and closed her miniature lips, then fastened her pink gums around the nipple, tugging at the darkened skin of the areola, dimpled now and swollen. The tiny fingertips clutched at the heavy, low-slung flesh with a perfect sense of entitlement.

The shape of the breast was still fine, Frankie noticed, more awesome than ever, but now blue veins filigreed the alabaster skin, turning it into something . . . well, more like an organ. Like a stomach sac, for example. With a function and a purpose other than his pleasure. In fact, Frank realized with a flicker of panic, his pleasure was just a by-product—entirely beside the point. The breast, now devoted exclusively to feeding his daughter, had nothing to do with him. He struggled to stay focused on the beauty here—his woman, his suckling child, his contribution to the future—but his appreciation was undermined by a niggling sense of being gypped. He'd been to jail. He'd been persecuted for his beliefs. Throughout his incarceration he'd been looking forward to curling up with Charmey, stroking her soft body, making love. He was only just learning the joys of the breast himself, and now to have it all snatched away by a blind, pouting dwarf who'd snuck onto the scene behind his back. Granted, it was
his
blind, pouting dwarf, but it was not something he'd ever thought to want, necessarily. All in all, he was not ready to find this situation entirely beautiful. Not by a long shot.

But still, it was complicated. When Charmey tucked her chin and gazed at the infant, her whole face took on a dewy glow, as soft as a flower opening at dawn. Watching her, Frankie experienced a funny rush of understanding—
So this is what a family feels like—
which was at once detached, amused, and, fuck yes, profound. He was happy that Charmey was so happy. He felt proud of himself. He smiled, and some of the tension left his body.

The baby drifted off to sleep. Gently, Charmey pressed on her breast to break the suction, then disengaged the tiny mouth from her nipple. She lowered the baby, laying her across her belly. She held out her arm to Frankie, who scooted up the bed beside her. Her nipple was still wet, still secreting moisture. More than anything, Frankie wanted to take it into his mouth and suck it as his daughter had, but he held back. He had taken care of dozens of babies in his various placements—that's what foster kids were good for—but he knew very little of the intimate business of mothers and infants, what was appropriate, what was not. So he just gazed at the nipple. But Charmey took his hand and cupped it around the soft weight of her breast.

“Go on,” she said. “Try it.”

“Really?” He looked up at her, doubting and amazed. He slowly brought his mouth to the nipple and gave it a tentative lick, then brought his lips around the nub of flesh. There was a mild but unexpected sweetness, like it had been dipped in sugar water, and as he started to suck, it became sweeter still.

Charmey giggled. “How is it?”

He tried to think of what the thin liquid tasted like. He wanted to say something nice, but all he could think of was lukewarm milk at the bottom of a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

“It's good,” he said, releasing the nipple. He ran his hand along the side of her body, resting it on her hip, careful not to wake the baby.

Charmey sighed.

He took his hand away.

She shifted the baby off to the far side of the bed, cradling her in pillows. Then she took his hand and brought it back against her stomach.

“
C'est bon,
” she said.

He ran his hand in circles around her navel, small at first, then widening. Her skin felt soft and flaccid, puddling in the basin between her pelvic bones. It was not the taut, boyish abdomen he'd first known, but he didn't mind. He let his head rest next to her hip. He kissed her hipbone. He felt his body relax a little more. Prison was exhausting. So much had changed, he thought, drifting off. He felt her hand rest lightly on his face, fingering a newly healed scar.

“I want to name her for you,” she whispered.

“For me?” He struggled to breach the surface of sleep. Frank was a terrible name.

“Well, not only for you. But for orphans. For people who have lost their homeland.”

Perdue? That was even worse. You couldn't call a little girl Perdue. He rolled over, ready to argue, but she was looking down at him with a totally blissed-out smile.

“I want to call her Tibet,” she said.

Tibet.

He nodded. He didn't quite get the connection—he was never very good at geography—but he liked the way it sounded. He leaned across Charmey's legs so that his face hovered just above the baby's. She was all red and squashed. She had a wispy ridge of hair, which stood up along the center of her head like a Mohawk, and a cluster of tiny white pimples across the bump of her nose. Her eyes were blue and still unseeing, but that would change in time. He scooped her carefully off the bed and sat up, cradling her in his arms. She was not beautiful, but he didn't care. He wasn't beautiful either. He supported her neck. He kissed her foot.

“Hi,” he whispered. “Hello, Tibet.”

Buddhists teach that there are only two things in life you can ever be sure of: the first is that you will die; the second is that you won't know when.

“Is this it? Is it happening now?”

“Why won't they say it? Why won't they tell me?”

Cass held my hand. She patted my arm. We stood outside Lloyd's room in the hallway, waiting for the doctor to finish the examination. “They probably just don't know,” she said.

Geek was leaning against the opposite wall. The Seeds had been released two days earlier, and they had descended onto the Cardiology Unit, establishing a base camp in the waiting room. They took turns visiting Lloyd, and sometimes I found it a relief to have them back, but other times it was just an annoyance. Now Geek, eager for a chance to console, offered up the teaching. “Buddhists say . . .”

“That's bullshit!” I said. “They're fucking doctors. They must know. They see this all the time. They just won't say it. It's the D word. They won't say the D word. It makes them look bad, like they've failed or something.”

The doctor emerged from behind the curtain. Melvin followed close behind. The doctor was showing him a notation on my father's chart. Melvin had cut off his dreadlocks in prison and removed most of his earrings. Now, except for the perforated earlobes, he looked almost normal. He was wearing a crew-collar shirt. He and the doctor conferred.

“Just say it,” I interrupted. “Just say it. He's dying, right?”

They looked up, surprised, like they'd just discovered a gauche or feebleminded child. A foreigner who didn't know the rules.

“Right,” Melvin agreed.

What good did that do? I slumped against the wall. Cass put a hand on my shoulder.

“We want to move him to Palliative,” the doctor said.

“What's that?”

“Hospice care,” Melvin explained. “They'll be able to make him comfortable. Manage his pain.”

“Hospice?” I turned to the doctor. “You're giving up on him?”

“Suspending life-prolonging measures . . .”

“Letting him die.” It was like we were playing some kind of strange word game.

“We think it's time to move him,” the doctor continued after a discreet pause. “But we'll need him to agree to a DNR status.”

“DNR?”

“Do Not Resuscitate.”

I sank slowly down the wall and hugged my knees like Ocean.

“Wait a minute. I don't get it. Are you saying he's got to
agree
to die?” I realized how dumb I sounded, but I couldn't help it. I'd always thought it was straightforward. Life or death. Black or white. I didn't realize there were so many shades of dying. So many different levels. “Does he know?”

The doctor shook his head.

“Well, then, good luck. Last I heard, he likes being alive, and he's planning on continuing awhile longer.” I was beginning to catch on. It was all a matter of intention. The doctors' intentions. Lloyd's. God's. And whoever else wanted to weigh in on the matter. Death would come when everyone agreed and arrived at a consensus.

“If you could talk to him,” the doctor suggested gently. “Help him to understand, to accept—”

“Me!” I cowered against the wall, holding up my hands to fend him off. “Whoa! That's your job, isn't it? You're the expert.”

“You're his daughter.”

A simple statement of fact. But so misguided.

“You're telling me
I'm
supposed to convince him?” I crouched there, staring at this man in disbelief. I wasn't even sure who this doctor was, there had been so many. I started to laugh. I threw back my head and howled with laughter. The nurses at the station looked up, alarmed, but I didn't care. I was a lunatic. Fine.

“Maybe ask him about his wishes,” the doctor suggested.

“His wishes? Oh, wow! You really don't get it.” I stopped laughing abruptly and swallowed. “My father and I don't exactly see eye to eye when it comes to making life-and-death decisions.” I let my head fall once more to my arms and rocked back and forth like a catatonic child. “Melvin will talk to him. He'll be real good at this.”

The doctor and Melvin conferred again. Geek walked over and joined them. Good. Let the men sort it out.

“He's a farmer,” I heard Melvin explain. “He's suffering from a paranoid delusion about his seeds—”

Cass hunkered down next to me. “A word from our resident psych nurse,” I muttered. “Pretty profound, huh?”

“Yummy,” she said, “you need to talk to Lloyd.”

They were all waiting. I held up my hands and surrendered. “All right! You move him. I'll talk to him. After I have a smoke.”

 

 

I guess cowardice just runs in our family. I sat outside for an hour or two, smoking one cigarette after another, getting up occasionally to walk around the block, then returning, trying to think of what to say. When I finally went back in, they had transferred him to Palliative Care. The high-tech computerized paraphernalia of the Cardiology Unit was conspicuously absent here. No more chrome and latex. There were soft pastel colors on the walls. Potted plants lined the windowsills. A pair of harpists were setting up their instruments in the hallway.

Melvin and Lilith sat on either side of Lloyd's bed. Melvin was cradling Lloyd's head while Lilith fed him tiny spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream. He opened his mouth to the spoon like a fledgling bird, but his mouth was blue. Blue lips. Sluggish blue tongue. Charmey was sitting on the foot of the bed nursing Tibet. Lloyd watched her, smacked his lips, opened his mouth for more.

He gurgled every time he took a breath.

I threw myself into the chair by the window and planted my boot heels on the radiator. I stared out at an adjacent wing of the hospital, identical in architecture to the wing I was in. With one big difference. There, lives were being saved. Here, in Palliative, they were ending. I closed my eyes. Behind me, soft harp music wafted from the hallway. I sighed and swung my legs around. Lloyd's wishes. I glanced across the room. Melvin looked up.