Breathe Read online

  And now it is later. Somehow, it has become later. Days passing into weeks, and so it is later. You’d been meaning to go back, turn back, you and Gerard both, review exactly what happened, the sequence of events including the initial arrival at the Albuquerque airport, so much to remember, to maintain in chronological order!—with the excruciatingly slow yet swift passage of time you assume that there will be a time-out to allow you to comprehend what is happening, and yet—though you have been prepared for the decline, you are not (as it turns out) at all prepared for the (actual) decline, not rapid at first, yes but then rapid, and seemingly irreversible: weight-loss, dehydration, renal failure, the pressure of the (4-by-14 centimeter) urethral tumor on the stomach causing nausea, impossible for the patient-husband (who happens to be Gerard) to endure the strain on his organs much longer, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver; he has not eaten a meal in weeks, what seemed at first a snobbish disdain for mediocre hospital food in which (almost) one could take a kind of perverse pride has been revealed as a symptom of pathology, and not exquisite taste; even if he tries now, he cannot eat; has barely eaten at all for the past week; if he tries to swallow even soft foods he gags, if he tries to swallow even liquids he gags, he is clearly very exhausted, his ankles and wrists are badly swollen, his urine is being retained in his (hard, swollen) bladder, such extreme edema in itself can be lethal and so of course you must prepare yourself for the end, for his final minutes; you must prepare yourself, yet your mind drifts away in a vapor of unknowing; recall when you’d first met, at a Murray Perahia recital in Cambridge, a meeting of pure chance, introduced to each other by a mutual acquaintance who would never afterward figure in your lives.

  At first sight. Well—almost.

  But yes, I think we both knew.

  Clasping hands with a stranger! For that is the custom.

  And now, years later the catastrophic end. Nearing the catastrophic end. And now, the price that must be paid for such happiness.

  Too large to be removed surgically. When you’d heard this, you’d known. Gerard had known.

  Another time clasping the man’s hand. That same hand. For in that instant, there could be no words. And this time, the hand that had been so warm, so strong, so welcoming years ago felt cold, and not so responsive.

  But where will love abide?—you are wondering. When the husband’s body has been taken from you.

  Such thoughts you cannot retain. In the instant in which such a thought passes through your mind, it is gone.

  BREATHE! I LOVE YOU.

  Alone together now. At last alone. Not to be interrupted by the intrusion of medical staff. No more meals, all meals have ceased. No more checking of vital signs, all such routines have ceased. Tell yourself that this is desired. This is wished-for. This is the promise made to you: you alone can comfort your (dying) husband, you can rub his cracked lips with balm, you can wipe his forehead with a cool compress, he can (perhaps) hear your soft-murmured words, though he (probably) can’t respond he can (perhaps) hear you as you whisper to him embracing him in your arms, murmuring to him another time how you love him, what a wonderful husband he has been and how happy you’ve been in your marriage; the tale you tell, tell and retell is how he has changed your life forever; even as his breathing has become a torment to him, and a torment to hear, that hoarse labored breathing, that strangled breathing, the agonizing pause of seconds between breaths, and when you think This is the end, no more there is another gasping breath, and still another, and another breath quavering with effort as if a great boulder were being pushed away from the mouth of a cave to flood the cave with sunshine, to free the spirit trapped in the darkness of the cave. So often during the past several days a wild elation has swept through you—No. He will never die, this will never end. It has gone on forever, it will not end. I will not let it end. And halfway you have come to believe, since the start of your husband’s hospitalization nearly twenty days ago, that this interlude, this ordeal, will not end, very easily it might continue for a very long time, and in the interim it is (quite) possible that a new procedure for shrinking metastasized cancers will be discovered, will be made available, at the Santa Tierra Cancer Center it is (quite) possible that this radical new procedure will be adopted, perhaps there will be a drug trial in which Gerard McManus might be enrolled, none of this is far-fetched in the slightest, you don’t need to believe in miracles, indeed you do not believe in miracles in order to believe this. For you love him so much, it is a torment to you. You should release him yet you cannot possibly release him but continue to beg him Oh darling breathe! Breathe!—you are paralyzed with fear, you are in despair of losing this man you love more than you love yourself, you have no wish to survive him, naively and vaguely you’d planned to bring sleeping pills to the room, a handful of barbiturates from your cache at the house, to (somehow) manage to swallow enough pills to cease breathing even as your husband ceases breathing, a romantic fantasy in which you’d indulged yourself in an exhausted state, yet (of course) this fantasy cannot possibly be enacted, if you’d wanted to die with your husband in your arms you’d have had to prepare a strategy, you’d have had to make arrangements beforehand to remove your husband from the Cancer Center and to establish a hospice in your residence where you would have privacy for such a (noble?) act but (of course) you’d made no arrangements, days and weeks have passed and now it is too late for you’d done nothing more than make tentative inquiries, you have been so distracted by your husband’s ordeal, so mesmerized by his suffering, and by your own constant realization that you have no more control over what is happening to your husband and to you than if the two of you were dried leaves blown in the searing-hot desert winds.

  Breathe! Don’t. Ever. Stop.

  Madness! You cannot stop begging your husband, you cannot relinquish him, in terror of losing him, even as he struggles to breathe like a fish on land convulsing as he suffocates in air. Sobbing helpless and broken, the distraught wife, bereft of all shame, all inhibition, trying now to hold his body in both your arms, pressing your hot damp face in the crook of his neck pleading still for him not to leave you, not to abandon you, paralyzed with horror at what is happening, the culmination of weeks, days, hours, the culmination of a man’s life of forty-eight years; this singular interminable day that began at dawn and has continued for twelve, thirteen, now fourteen hours as you gradually realize that Death is already in the room, Death has seeped into the room without your knowing, in a corner of the room at the ceiling there is Death, a darkening shadow, a stain, a dark star-stain radiating outward like an eclipse of the sun that is an eclipse of your life.

  You know, you understand. Yet you cannot know, and you cannot understand. You are crazed, hysterical. You have lost all sense of decency. Crying No! Breathe! Don’t leave me—no! even as your exhausted husband is dying in your arms, a final sharp intake of breath and a long anguished trembling pause and a final heaving sigh of profound weariness that is the death-sigh, the last exhalation of a man’s life.

  This sigh, you will never forget. This sigh, you will hear virtually every hour of every day of the life remaining to you.

  This sigh, and the silence that follows like the silence after a thunderclap.

  3

  Post-Mortem

  Mrs. McManus?—you can remain with your husband as long as you wish.

  We will be waiting out in the corridor.

  4

  Time-Out-of-Time

  It was a season of hot searing winds by day. Stony-cold still air by night. A season in their (joint, married) lives that was out-of-time: an eight-month residency for Gerard McManus at the Institute for Advanced Research, at Santa Tierra, New Mexico, where they knew no one. Twenty-seven miles north of Albuquerque, where they knew no one.

  Indeed, they knew no one in all of New Mexico where neither had ever lived or even visited.

  Here was a new terrain. A high desert plateau, battalions of sculpted clouds, dark-bruised El Greco skies that drew the eye helplessly upwa
rd, intimidated by the sharp hurtful blade of beauty.

  And the air, at 7,875 feet above sea level pristine-clear, white-tinged, conspicuously thinner than the (urban, sullied, near-sea-level) air to which they were accustomed in Cambridge, Mass.

  In this stark lunar landscape they couldn’t seem to catch their breaths. Especially Gerard who’d had asthma as a child and remained susceptible to respiratory infections.

  Michaela who ran for an hour in the early morning beside the Charles River in Cambridge was discomforted to be winded within minutes when she ran along a canyon trail in Santa Tierra or climbed hillside steps too quickly. Awakened from sleep in the night by a panicky sensation of being unable to breathe as if a pillow had been placed over her nose and mouth, or a disembodied hand, or a cloth soaked in ether . . . Not realizing at first where she was, what place this could be, so sparely furnished, with stark white walls, vertical panels of glass, a moon so glaring-white it might have been radioactive visible through the bedroom wall—in fact, a window in relationship to their bed where Michaela would have sworn a window couldn’t be.

  But this was a new house. In a new landscape. Stark and stony sere-colors in which natural light could be blinding. And this setting incongruously festooned with exotic cacti, wisteria thick-vined as boa constrictors, hollyhocks, sagebrush, lavender and rosemary grown to heights unimaginable in Massachusetts.

  A yet-uninhabited house. A house to be claimed as theirs.

  Inside the house there was surprisingly little color. For this was a private residence built in the stark style of Frank Lloyd Wright who’d himself designed the original Institute building in 1951.

  The interior atmosphere of the house was that of a museum of minimalist objects. Fierce Native American war masks, on the fireplace mantel and on walls; tall thick coarse-textured candles that looked as if they would emit clouds of noxious smoke, if lit; crude wooden carvings of various creatures ranging from Gila monsters to potbellied deities, or demons, that might be mistaken for Buddhas if you didn’t look closely. A droop-breasted demon-goddess with a shrieking mouth, sharp curving claws for fingers, and what appeared to be (neither Michaela nor Gerard cared to inspect too closely) a raw gaping vagina prominent between her spread legs. A male figure with a disproportionately large skull from which strands of coarse black (human?) hair sprouted to his shoulders, gaping mouth, swollen belly and erect skinny penis curving upward like a snake—as Michaela would learn, the Scavenger God Ishtikini whose ravenous appetite can never be appeased.

  In the master bedroom was a squat froglike creature with bulging pop eyes, deep slit-nostrils in place of a nose, pitted skin that looked as if it were made of calcified mud—this, a hardwood carving several sizes larger than a bullfrog. Strangest was a life-sized stag head made of myriad layered strips of leather held in place with staples resembling tiny seeds; its eyes were mismatched marbles and its twelve-inch horns were the real horns of a stag, one of which was cracked and hung askew.

  “Oh, God! What is this!”—Michaela cried in exasperation.

  These artifacts, or whatever they were, Michaela came to dislike, and so (stealthily) hid them away in closets and drawers, hoping that Gerard wouldn’t miss them; if he did, she would explain that the ugly things weren’t art, and she doubted that they were even authentic Native American.

  Especially Michaela disliked the (obscene) female figure, that could only have been created by a male artist. So awful, Michaela not only hid it in a closet but draped a towel over it.

  Authentic indigenous art they did want to own, certainly. Before their trip Gerard had researched the work of the most revered regional tribal artists—Navajo, Taos Pueblo—which he planned to purchase, to bring back to the house on Monroe Street, Cambridge. These were beautiful carvings primarily of animals, handwoven rugs and wall hangings, quilts that “told stories.”

  Yes! Michaela agreed. The household in which she’d come to live as Gerard’s wife twelve years before could do with some reviving.

  Her heart was suffused with hope, this time-out-of-time would be the honeymoon they’d never had time for.

  GO AWAY! LEAVE HERE!

  You are not wanted here.

  Almost, Michaela could see the figure squatting on her chest—hunched, stunted, with coarse savage hair to its shoulders and glaring eyes that were (yet) blind. As if the humanoid creature had discovered her by her smell, in the dark.

  Waking panicked. Paralyzed beneath the creature’s weight.

  Then, managing to throw off panic like a soft spiderweb clinging to her face. Not wanting to disturb Gerard for with the rational part of her brain she understood that she had to be dreaming.

  . . . not wanted here.

  . . . in danger here.

  The voice was distinct. A thistle-like rustling in her ear, an approximation of a human whisper.

  Sitting up then in bed, cautiously. As her racing heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

  Sleeping with another person is a responsibility, a trust: you must not intrude into the other’s dreaming.

  Above all, you must not alarm the other with your (baseless) fears.

  It was the new place, the new bed, not very comfortable, yes and the new, thin air, a sense of unease, nothing more. Having to adjust the expectation that she would be waking in the (familiar) bed, bedroom, house in Cambridge where furniture had become so familiar it was virtually invisible to their eyes, walls were lined with books floor to ceiling like the interior of a cocoon, and the exterior landscape scarcely impinged upon the interior at all: if there were views in the house on Monroe Street they were modest, urban views of deciduous trees, the house next door, a patch of cloudy sky.

  Stiffly beside her Gerard slept with his back to her. Michaela hesitated wanting to touch him, gently; caress his shoulder, his arm, his side, his flank; would have liked to press her lips against the smooth cool skin of his back and with her fingertips trace the archipelagos there of freckles and moles like Braille, a secret language only she, the wife, could decipher.

  But Gerard did not wish to be touched just now. Michaela knew.

  For several years following his divorce Gerard had lived alone. Desperately lonely at first but then by degrees beginning to feel relief—for human relations are so complicated, so resistant of interpretation. Like a foreign language when one is too old to easily learn a foreign language.

  Alone had become a natural state for Gerard, intimacy was sometimes not so attractive to him.

  Michaela too had lived alone for several years following the end of a relationship. But living alone, sleeping alone, defining herself as essentially alone was not a condition Michaela wished to preserve. She could not bear a life without intimacy or at least the possibility of intimacy and so she lay very still (like a bride) (a virginal bride) and waited to see if Gerard would turn to her, speak softly to her. If he might gather her in his arms as sometimes he did, unexpectedly, with a tender little laugh.

  Hey. Darling. Love you!

  Or—You awake? Kiss me!

  But Gerard did not turn to Michaela and gather her in his arms. He did not call her darling or command her playfully to kiss.

  And so how lonely, in the night! Beside a husband wishing to sleep and not to be wakened by his wife at just this moment for (it would seem) there remains an infinity of such moments in their life together.

  Never come to the end of kissing.

  5

  Unthinkable

  You know that I love you.

  . . . will never abandon you.

  My promise when we were married.

  FOR IF I ABANDON YOU that is death.

  That is the death of you, and that is the death of me.

  And so, we must not let them separate us—not for a heartbeat.

  YOU KNOW THAT—DON’T YOU?

  6

  A Rare Parasite

  Twenty-two days after their move from Cambridge, Mass., to Santa Tierra, New Mexico, Gerard fell ill.

  Wanting to blame th
e high thin air of New Mexico. Relentless searing winds that blew for much of each day drying their sinuses and leaving a fine film of dust in their mouths precipitating Gerard’s symptoms: the harsh dry cough, the wracking but (mostly) phlegmless cough, the cough-that-causes-sharp-chest-pain.

  Just asthma, Gerard insisted. For which he (already) took medication each morning.

  Michaela protested: this harsh, hacking cough did not sound like Gerard’s asthma-cough, she was certain . . . She would find a doctor for him, if he wished.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Michaela. It’s nothing.”

  Nothing! Surely it was not nothing, the way Gerard coughed in the early morning, in the bathroom, often with the fan whirring to disguise the alarming staccato sounds like the retorts of a pistol.

  Repeating, she would find a doctor in Santa Tierra, if he wished.

  Well, he did not wish.

  Eventually Gerard conceded that the cough did “sound” bad: he would double the asthma dose.

  Since she’d first known him Gerard had resisted any concern of Michaela’s for his well-being. Physical intimacy did not bring with it the ease of intimacy in other regards. Michaela was not one to intrude on the privacy of others and so, with Gerard, there was a line she dared not cross, invading the man’s privacy.

  Excuse me: that’s private.

  Sorry. That’s private.

  Why d’you want to know? That’s private.

  Absurd! Yet, Michaela was made to know that Gerard felt strongly about this.

  That brick wall you confront, in the other. Eventually.

  The wall that is the end of intimacy. The wall that separates.

  The wall of unreason, intransigence. The wall that you might laugh at, which (yet) remains, unyielding.