Depictions of Death and Terminal Illness

Point of Entry

             Semo and I started sleeping together five days after the shootings. In bed that first afternoon, a Friday, I rubbed his acres of dark Samoan skin, felt the contours of his tight arm muscles. He was huge, compared to Jake’s slight build. His chest and gut were massive and I doubted if he could see his dick when he peed. His giant hands felt good rubbing up and down my arms. I would’ve been mashed if he’d tried to be on top, and I wondered how Becky had managed, being smaller and thinner than I. For a moment, on top of him reminded me of riding the mechanical bulls at the state fair, but I shut the image out and concentrated on the surge of fullness as he entered me. It had been so long, too long. I’d missed this.

            Becky was dead now, one of the three cops shot at Pup’s Coffee House on Sunday. Macy too, from neighboring Haislip. And Jake, shot but not dead, lying in the county hospital’s neurology ICU, where we waited for him to wake up. He had a bullet in his back and another through his skull and any time now I might be widow number three, even after the surgeries.

            Semo had been waiting in our driveway Friday in his white Corolla. I recognized him from Monday, when we were taken to Pup’s as part of the Family Grief program. The department’s new idea was to get the family to the scene of the crime as soon as possible and twenty-four hours didn’t seem too soon for them. I was a cop too, well sort of, working a desk job at the station; I’d been the one to process the paperwork on the consultant who sold the idea.

            The way it happened that Friday afternoon when I invited Semo in, five days after the shootings, was this: his arm went across my shoulder and I let myself burrow into his hard chest. He smelled of lemon and sweat. Resisting would have been difficult, for either of us. We were both ripped raw with our respective agonies. At Pup’s on Monday, and again that Friday, his face showed his devastation, creased and tear-streaked – he and Becky’d been married just two months and he’d only been in the States for three. Their whirlwind wedding was famous around the station but I’d never met him.

             I didn’t stop to judge what was right or good right then. I had no desire to leave the massive arms circling my bony shoulders. We stayed like that for minutes, until I threw my purse to the side and put both arms around his neck, and then we were kissing and murmuring unintelligibly and for once, there was no doctors, no counselors, no cops. “I know we’re not supposed to,” he said, “but this is nice.” It was nothing we expected; we were not out to commit a sin or behave badly, but it happened.

            The morning of the shootings was more memorable than just that. I learned a few things before the tragedy. Jake and I were up at the same time, which had become more unusual than the norm. My shift started at the station at seven, his at eight. In his boxers and an Overland High sweatshirt, he slurped cornflakes and watched a rerun of Raymond on the small TV in the kitchen. I went to the fridge for mayonnaise and mustard, to make a sandwich for my lunch. Jake’s cell phone rang. He picked the phone up from the counter and I heard his voice change, it lowered, then he moved off the stool and walked down the narrow hall to the guest room. The door shut.

             When he walked back into the kitchen, cell phone in his palm, his eyes darted around like the room was unfamiliar.

            “What was that?” I said, trying to sound casual.

            “Nothing. Just Dooley. You know, talking about a call last night. Woman shot a dog while he was, uh, at the house, kind of, uh, upset him.” Dooley was a cop who’d started with Jake and they’d been friends ever since. I didn’t like him much; he had a swagger about him that made me think he’d shoot before he saw a weapon, though he hadn’t yet.

            “Hmmm. He doesn’t usually call you about stuff like that, does he?”

            Jake kept his gaze on the table and set the phone next to his bowl. “Oh well. He did. You know how much he loves Maxim.” Maxim was Dooley’s German shepherd, a flunk-out of the drug-dog training program. “And now my cornflakes are soggy.” He laughed and it was artificial.

            “I’ll fix you another bowl,” I said, my cheeks heating up. “But could you run up to the bathroom and get my watch? I left it on the counter.” Anxious to do whatever, he said “sure” with false endearment and walked up the half-flight to our bedroom. The bathroom was at the back and my watch wasn’t there, it was on my wrist. I took it off and put it in my pocket. He’d look for it in three places, just enough time for me to check the cell phone.

            I went off to work that morning with Jake jawing about what an airhead I was for the watch being in my pocket, and requesting my mustard chicken breasts for dinner, but saying he probably wouldn’t be home till eight. He and Dooley were going out for a couple beers, which I knew meant more like six.

            “Talk this afternoon,” I said on my way out. But of course we didn’t talk again, till much later, when things were drastically different.

            At work it was easy to look up the number I didn’t recognize. I watched over my shoulder to make sure no one approached while I broke the privacy rules. I didn’t know anyone named Roxanne Percy. A search in the database revealed that she was one of the speeders he’d pulled over a month ago, on Highway 10. The address listed was about five miles from our house. His cell phone bill revealed fourteen calls since then, all double-digit in minutes. I looked up her license. She was twenty-five and, in the picture, wore her hair in short braids, which made her look like a teenager.

* * *

            Unlike Macy, the Haislip cop with five kids, Jake and I didn’t have any children. We couldn’t, so far, and Jake had refused to go through the process of finding out why six years of trying hadn’t been successful. With friends he was coy, but inferred it was I who couldn’t conceive. I’d done all the research on adopting, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s my own or none,” he said more than once. At family gatherings, his mother was fond of stating how I wasn’t getting any younger.

            Dating, and the first year we were married, Jake was generous to a fault, helping random neighbors with burst pipes or flat tires, even if it meant letting his dinner get cold. Anxious for a family, he warmly took me into the bedroom whenever he got the chance. When nothing happened baby-wise, he became impatient with everyone and everything. He shorted out at the smallest infraction.

            I’d long gotten off the Chinese or African baby adoption idea and was fully prepared to do the work and wait the wait to get a Caucasian child. But no. He was adamant in his position; ragingly standing his ground on having a child of his own, as if pure perseverance could make it happen. He put his hands over his ears, “not listening, not listening” he’d sing-song at the breakfast table, tilting his head side-to-side. When he gave the final “no” on the subject of adopting, it became hard to remember the reasons we’d married, what had attracted me to this uncompromising, angry man in the first place. I went on the Pill for a while without him knowing, but then stopped. If we hadn’t conceived for this long, it wasn’t going to happen now.

* * *

            At the site on Monday, the day after the shootings, the white brick apron of the building was wallpapered with grocery store bouquets from strangers. I figured the floral department in the nearby Safeway must be nothing but empty shelves. Yellow police tape zigzagged across the door of Pup’s, as if one strip wouldn’t do it this time. Cops had been assigned to scurry around and make sure we were being taken care of, that no one was going to faint away or need medical attention. There was an ambulance parked in the back corner of the lot, just in case.

            They’d assembled us outside the building. We’d all been driven down in squad cars –LaVonne, Macy’s widow, Semo (Becky’s Samoan hunk), and me, my stomach twisting as we waited in the lot. Walking inside to see where our spouses had been shot was optional, of course, but Helen, from the grief counseling office, convinced me without too much trouble. Be dutiful, chin up, my late cop-father would say. Semo seemed less sure, hanging back. Lavonne was a wailer.

            Stu, the chief of our department, held onto my arm, trying to choke back his own tears. He paid special attention to me because he’d mentored Jake since he joined the force. I remembered a few scattered moments from those first twenty-four hours: being whisked to the hospital to see the unconscious Jake, looking tiny and worn against the white sheets of the gurney as they wheeled him to surgery; the rookie cop who  drove me to there in his squad car, and how I wished I’d sat in the back, behind the grated divider, so I wouldn’t have to watch him chew his bottom lip and stutter out nervous conversation, the shattering quiet of the townhouse after the beeps and p.a. announcements at the hospital.

            It was cold out, just above freezing, when we got to Pup’s, and I’d only grabbed my fleece. I wanted my parka back at the house and I felt like telling a milling, lucky-it-wasn’t-him officer to go get it for me. Right now they’d do anything for us; we could be as unreasonable and demanding as we wanted, but I didn’t have the energy.

            Semo wore a 49-ers jersey over a long-sleeved turtleneck, no coat. He’d played football in high school, but hadn’t they all? Taking in Semo’s bulk, I couldn’t imagine him being cold, ever. When he took his mitt-like hands away from his face, his eyes were swollen.

            LaVonne’s husband Macy was from Haislip, the neighboring town. Jake and he had been working on a strategy to combat a new gang called The Blades. So there Jake must’ve been in the coffee shop, laptop open on one of the imitation marble tables, back to the door, with Semo’s new wife Becky, and Macy. Jake would’ve been eating a bear claw and drinking a short Americano and have set his hat on the sill. I could see his heavy eyebrows furrowed over a Google Earth neighborhood on the laptop screen, not expecting a gunman at his back.

            “C’mon, Brownie, this way,” Stu said, pushing on my elbow as if I couldn’t move forward without the help. Maybe I couldn’t. But hearing him call me by my nickname cut through the trance-like wall. There was no reason he should call me Janet at this point, since he and everyone called me Brownie around the station, where I was known for always having a chocolate-something on my desk, but still it startled me in an unfamiliar way.

            Cars slowed down as they went by and many honked. Some were waving like they were in a parade. I know they meant well, but I wanted them gone. This was none of their business, but then I knew that it was everybody’s business, because the dead – and wounded, I had to remember – were cops. It’s the life, and working in the station myself I knew it, but right then I wanted to be anonymous.

            Two cops flanked the front door. They’d followed procedures well with the police tape and were able to pull one vertical band on the side to release enough strips all at once and let us in, rather than having to limbo under. Semo had to duck to miss the top lone band of tape near the header, but he came up too fast and it snapped apart on his forehead.

            Stu pointed to the first table, “They were sitting here.” The blood had been cleaned up, of course. I could see how some of the fake-marble patterning had given up under the fortitude of bleach. Pine disinfectants overwhelmed the traditional smells of boiling oil from the doughnut vats. “This is where Macy sat.” At the mention of her husband, LaVonne shrieked, then started bawling. Semo rubbed his eyes.

            “Where was Jake?” I said.

            Stu tapped the back of the chair next to him. “Jake. Working on his laptop. Becky here,” he said, tapping the next chair.

            Stu walked over to the counter. How many times I’d stood there and ordered a Danish and orange juice. “The shooter went here first, to the counter, and asked for a sugar doughnut, then he peeled back his flak jacket and showed the girl a .45. She ran out the back door and heturned and shot Jake twice, then Becky once. Macy pulled his weapon, then the shooter got Macy with four shots to the neck and head.” LaVonne was inconsolable, her grief echoing off the hard surfaces. “The shooter is wounded,” Stu said, “which will help us catch him.”

            “From a shot Macy got off?” I said. Stu nodded and LaVonne made an effort to swallow her sobs. Suddenly things seemed different, like Macy was a hero for getting a shot off before he died. Somehow he was better than our cops; quicker, faster.

            Stu wiped his forehead with a yellowed hankie as if he’d been through this a thousand times already in the longest morning of his life. He was just five months from retirement.

            I looked at Semo and he looked at me. We hadn’t met, but we stayed staring at each other. LaVonne was wailing again, but we were both stoic. We never did introduce ourselves.

* * *

            The day after the shootings, they took Jake’s second bullet out. I stayed home on the advice of the nurses and the counselor, who said I was no use in the waiting room. I kept the curtains closed and didn’t answer the bell, feeling rude but that didn’t bother me enough to welcome in strangers and casseroles. I went to the store to buy tangerines and when I got home, my brother Bart’s Tacoma truck was in the driveway. He was in the living room, head in hands, a mug of coffee cooling on the tile table. The mug had pictures of my niece on it, a present last Christmas. Even though I loved her, it was a reminder of our own childlessness.

            “Where have you been?” he said. “I came to your house.” He was the king of stating the obvious. “Janey, come sit by me,” he said, patting the middle couch cushion. Typically, he only showered a couple times a week and I hoped this was one of the mornings. I sat down on the sofa at the far end anyway.

            Bart reached over with a grunt and patted my knee. “I can’t believe Jake’s been shot,” he said, in the same squeaky voice he used to get his way when we were growing up. The conversations between him and Jake over the years had never gone beyond weather and baseball.

            I could feel a welling, and I wanted nothing more than to be alone in the bedroom where it could all come out, but instead I reached for the pack of Marlboro Lights on the table, slid one out, and lit it with a lighter that said “Grand Tetons” on the side. “We knew it could happen at any time,” I said. I chewed the pad of my thumb.

            He leaned back on the corduroy throw pillows, exasperated. “You are so being a cop right now.”

            ”It’s a dangerous job,” I said. He’d tried to get into the academy years ago. I tapped my cigarette over the huge ceramic ashtray in the center of the table. Maize-yellow pottery with an orange bird in the middle; it had accepted the butts of my parents’ cigarettes for forty years. Jake hated my smoking. He’d relegated me to the back porch. “I have to go back to the hospital.”

            “I can drive you.”

            We got up to leave. It was still cold outside, and I went back for my parka hanging on a hook behind the door. Outside, I flicked my cigarette into the laurel bush and put the coat on. The sleeves hung down past my hands and I realized I’d grabbed Jake’s coat. I went back inside for my own parka, letting his drop on the floor.

            Bart was already in the cab of the truck, revving the engine as he liked to do, no matter the temperature. A small car pulled up out front, one I didn’t recognize, white and dirty, with a sticker I couldn’t read on the front bumper.

            Semo undid himself from the tiny car and walked across the lawn. I recognized him from the day inside Pup’s. “Hello Mrs. Janet,” he said. He walked across the grass in his sweats and high tops. I imagined this being the only kind of clothing he could wear. Bart rolled down the truck’s window but didn’t say anything.

            I was wishing for my cigarette, something to do with my hands. “Hello, Semo.”

            His face crinkled up, like it had done off and on that morning at Pup’s. “What are we going to do?” He put his big hand across his face.

            “Semo, you should go home,” I said. I put my hand on his elbow like the cops had done to me, but of course you couldn’t just turn a big man like that in a direction you thought best.

            “Do you have anyone waiting at home, Becky’s relatives, anyone?”

            “No ma’am,” he said. I didn’t know why he was addressing me so formally. I was older, sure, by a decade probably, but I wasn’t his mother.

            “C’mon Janey, we have to go,” Bart shouted from the truck. He didn’t know who Semo was, but he would’ve rushed me even if he had. I waved him to be quiet.

            I moved closer to Semo. My conversation with him was none of Bart’s business. “Semo, I have to go to the hospital. Remember? Jake is still alive.” At this he burst into a choking cry, as if it was too much to hear the word “alive” when Becky was dead. “You go home. Be there for the phone calls. You’ll be asked to do a lot of things. We’ll…we’ll talk later.”

            He pushed his shoulders back a bit and raised his head. Wet lines still divided his cheeks but he wasn’t crying. “Okay. But I don’t know what to do.”

            I let my hand run along his back as he turned. My palm pushed him off, but I’m sure it only felt like a push to me.

            “Let’s go,” Bart yelled, slapping the outside of the truck’s door.

            I walked over and got in, watching Semo. We followed his little car out of the neighborhood and then he turned right, and we turned left, to take me to the place I didn’t want to go, the bland and harshly lit halls of the county hospital.

* * *

            Jake’s first two surgeries did what was expected, removed the bullets. Doctors sat with me, explaining things with diagrams, their hands, and big words. Some were comforting and others were clipped. Policemen roamed the halls. Some had come for condolences and didn’t want to leave too fast, and some were on duty, watching the room, just in case. The shooter had not been captured, but every day sections of town were cordoned off while the cops swooped in on leads.

            “We’re getting closer every hour, Brownie,” Stu said when he was up at the hospital. We sat in the cafeteria over plates of doughy lasagne.

            “What does that mean, closer?”

            He loosened his tie. The minute before, he’d spotted it with tomato sauce. “He can’t go too far. He’s hurt.” Stu looked around the dining hall. “Brownie, this thing is going to kill us. He’s a known offender, should never have been let out. The faster we take him down, the better. God, I wish you could get a drink in here.”

            Up on three, the nurses brought me juice, and some cookies that were really biscuits for toddlers. They brought me apples and gumdrops. I ate everything. They offered to set up a bed in Jake’s room, but I declined. No one questioned anything in this kind of distress. He hadn’t woken up yet after the second surgery on his brain, and this was the tremulous thing we were all waiting on. I didn’t want to be there when he did, because someone had to tell him he’d never walk again, from the bullet in his back. I was glad to leave that to a nurse or doctor.

            I’d found out that morning about him being paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors spoke of it like a miracle, that any higher the entrance point of the bullet and he would’ve lost the use of his arms, too. Reporters tried to get me to answer questions on the sidewalk as I walked to my car. They outnumbered us, me and the escort I’d been given. “What’s your reaction now that your husband is a confirmed paraplegic?” “Will you be able to take care of Officer Rockne in your current house?” “Will he be able to have children?” It felt like reality TV: Wheelchair Wives! See which spouse can last the longest in their new life with a paraplegic!

            I finally convinced people – cops, including Stu, and my brother Bart – that I could drive myself around. Bart had to get back to work in order to keep his job at Staple’s, so I was finally on my own. Leave from my job would extend as long as I wanted, this was the kind of precinct Stu ran. So far, I hadn’t done a thorough job of thinking what could happen to Jake, in the long term. At home those first few days, after the shooting and before Semo and I slept together, I mostly smoked and watched television, instead of thinking out doomsday scenarios. I thought about him dying, and I knew there was a good chance, and I thought about him being all stitched up and good as new, but I hadn’t really thought about him spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

            After our first afternoon together, Semo continued to come over. I gave him Jake’s garage door opener from the patrol car, so he could slip in easily, even if I wasn’t home. Sometimes I went to his place, but it wasn’t as good – a double-wide out on the highway near Three Line, lots of noise, and pictures of Becky all over the thin Masonite walls. They had a king-sized bed that took up the whole room, and to get out of bed, you had to scoot off the bottom edge.

            When Semo was at the house, all the familiar things seemed different, or mostly I didn’t think about them; the reminders of Jake everywhere, and how the house looked daunting, with its half-flights up and down, its narrow doorways, fine only for the ambulatory. It was the one place I’d ever owned and I didn’t want to move. Semo navigated it with ease. He seemed to fit wherever he planted himself – on the overstuffed sofa, in Jake’s lounger (which he didn’t know was specifically Jake’s) and even on the ladder-back dining chairs, as if he’d lived there as long as I had.

            We stayed in bed for half the day that first afternoon, unplugging the phone and not answering a doorbell, which I hoped was a random solicitor and not someone who knew both our cars. Making love with Semo was so different than any recent sex with Jake, which consisted of him pushing me down on the bed and unzipping his pants, anxious to make a baby. “Gotta give the most chances possible,” he’d say, rubbing his dick to get it hard. So different from the younger man I’d married, just a rookie, holding onto me like I was a fragile egg that could break without his care. Lately – when there’d been a lately – he’d push down my pants with roughness, like he was stripping someone he’d arrested.

            On Semo’s visits, we spent most of our time in the bedroom. His moaning, I worried sometimes, might even rouse the neighbors. In between, I lay in his warm mass while he stroked my hair or slept, his gentle snoring like a low boil. I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see the pictures on the dresser. My husband was as good as dead, then I reneged the shameful thought in my head. He’d betrayed me, betrayed his employment by messing around with a citizen he met in the line of duty, yet he was going to be lauded for surviving. He’d be wheeled out of the hospital with flowers and ribbons and reporters and we’d be on the six o’clock news. I’d have to be smiling and speak to the press like this was nothing and I was ready to be married to a gimp.

            These thoughts came into my head all the time. I tried to shutter them away, thought about going to church even though I was a very lapsed Lutheran, wished (sometimes) for a Jehovah’s Witness to be at the door, letting them stay for the afternoon with a pot of tea, explaining how I could be saved. But I knew it wouldn’t happen.

            After I did my research to find a convalescent home where Jake could recoup, I’d have to call the realtor and get the house on the market, this house I’d carefully decorated with the help of Ikea and Good Housekeeping. In the depressed market, we’d have to take a loss on it, and find something flat and cheap, which would mean a lesser neighborhood, probably on a busy street, just to afford to move. A fund would be established, of course, but it would likely focus on college for LaVonne and Macy’s kids. Even though Semo wasn’t working yet, they’d look at us as able to bring home a paycheck, no mouths to feed, and we were not as likely to see money. And Jake hadn’t died, after all, so I’d be considered last.

            Katrina, my favorite nurse, called at seven the next day to say that Jake was awake. I knew what it meant, that he’d been told about not walking. I got Semo up and took a quick shower – I had to get to the hospital before my absence was criticized. He accepted a bowl of Frosted Flakes with no milk, taking it to his car to eat driving home. “This is a beautiful thing anyway,” he said, brushing two fingers along my cheeks, so big they seemed like a whole hand. He kissed the top of my head.

            I drove up Highway 99 to the hospital and on the way, Stu called. “Just wanted you to know he’s dead.”

            I inhaled sharply. All the suffering Jake would be spared. A truck whizzed by on my right. But relief was short-lived, when I realized I didn’t know who he was talking about.

            “Who?” I said. For an instant it seemed alarmingly like it might be Semo.

            “The shooter, of course,” said Stu. “Caught him at an abandoned house over on Cleary Street. He ran out the back with a gun and one of our men shot him. Dead.”

            I shuddered at my conclusion-jumping. “Is he from here?” I said, then wondered why that was my first question. What did I care?

            “Kalonish. Originally. He was in prison for a short stint in Missouri, then later in Ohio. Been back in this area for about a year. Has a thing about cops. Some kind of vengeance.”

            I didn’t say anything, out of ignorance as to the proper response.

            Stu said, “I hope this brings you some kind of lift, Janet.” He hadn’t called me Janet since I first came to the department. I heard a phone ringing in his background. “Call me if you need anything. Call me first,” he said.

            Traffic was medium. Gliding along at forty, I thought about Stu’s offer, and knew that under other circumstances, I’d take him up on it, use him as a crutch. I was as close to Stu as Jake was. But I’d never confided in him the crumbled shape of our marriage. To do it then would be improper, the same way I carried the secret of Semo with me, guarding it from all the prying eyes that were trying to be of comfort. Stu would never think of me the same. Jake was awake at the hospital. I walked slowly to the bedside, ran a finger along his forearm. He cried out; his face contorted. But not for long, and I knew it would be this way, he was angry. His lips then set so hard you could barely see them. “Why me, for fucking God’s sake?” he said, and would say more than once a visit from there on out. A young aide changing towels in the bathroom left quickly.

            He slammed his hand on the mattress and I jumped. Then that same hand grabbed my wrist. “Come here,” he said, pulling me to his reclined position. “Lay your head here.” He pushed my head onto his chest, causing me to lean awkwardly into him. The gown was rough on my cheek, his heart thumped in my ear. Then he pushed his hand away and, I’m not sure, I guess growled would define the sound. I stood up, my spine making a cracking noise. “Why the fucking God, why?” We sat in silence after each outburst. Then he asked who had called about him, and I thought of Roxanne, though she hadn’t. Even in his cell phone, and yes, I’d checked.

            The rest of the day I spent with nurses and social workers, talking about details. Jake’s convalescence was planned for eight weeks; he’d leave the hospital in one, go to an assisted care center for seven. When I was finally set free from the beige cubicle, Bart was in the waiting room, contemplating a supersized soda cup in his hand. The ceiling-mounted TV blared. He looked up when I entered. “I can’t believe he’s not going to walk.”

            “Well, Channel 4 never lies,” I said. I stood over him. A Taco Bell bag was on the side table, empty. “Did you see him?”

            Bart sipped from the cup. There was no soda left and the slurping sound caused an old man to look over. “I went in. But what can I say? I’m just his dumb brother-in-law and he’s a hero. I offered him my tacos, but I bet it’s against the rules. When he gets better Janey, I’ll take him fishing on some boat that can take wheelchairs.” Bart, always trying to do the right thing, but I knew he’d forget, or find the details too complicated.

            “Let’s worry about your outing later,” I said, and he gave me his arm as we meandered – my exhaustion and his general slowness – to an exit.

            The next day Semo and I drove into Overland for lunch. After hot dogs, we walked through the square, which was really a rectangle, only half a block. We sat on a bench by the bronze war vet, and Semo dared to touch my hand after making sure no one was walking by.

            “What if we went off together, J?” he said, not for the first time. He started calling me J that Friday afternoon in bed, five days after the shootings, saying he wanted his own nickname. “I could go back to Samoa and take you with me. My momma has room in her old house.”

            I never answered when he asked about going away together, and he stopped looking at me like he was waiting for an answer. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it. He was twenty-nine to my thirty-eight, but no one cared about that. He had a job lined up as an assistant trainer in the athletic department of a community college. The school was thirty miles away, we could move another thirty beyond that, get completely out of the spotlight. The idea of leaving Jake was welcome, I couldn’t deny it. Ramps, lifts, a van, the emaciated sticks Jake’s legs would become, him throwing things from his wheelchair when he got frustrated, the list was incomprehensible. I felt like one of the enlisted, even though my tour of duty hadn’t really started.

            People looked at me with sainthood eyes. “You can do it, Janet, if anyone can,” is what they said when I ran into them at Safeway or the video store. “I admire you,” and admire was such a compelling word. Who doesn’t want to be admired? It was so much more upstanding- sounding than something like “envied,” and less agitating than asking forgiveness all over the place after running out on a heroic paraplegic. “You’re the strongest of us all, Brownie,” was what Stu said, every time he saw me, including at the memorial for the others, in front of Semo and LaVonne.

            “I never wanted to be,” I said.

            No one ever acted like I had a choice. It was only with Semo, when we talked about our options. He was free, of course, to do whatever. I knew he was heartbroken over Becky and that being with me was some kind of comfort that might last and might not. I spent sleepless nights wishing Jake had died like the others. Not just for me, but for him, too; quick and tragic. Whoever Roxanne Percy had been to him – a roll in the hay or a serious lover he hoped to leave me for – she hadn’t loved him long enough to let it crush her life.

* * *

            Jake had been in the convalescent home for six of the scripted seven weeks. He was gaining strength, but I was not suggesting he come home early. It was just about that time that I realized I might be pregnant. My breasts were sore and I was waking up nauseous, guzzling 7up in the mornings. I’d missed my last period but barely noticed – nothing surprised me post- shooting. And now I had the little box from the pharmacy on the shelf, too scared to open it.

            I didn’t tell Semo, because I knew it would’ve “sealed the deal” as they say. Kept him stuck to me forever. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just an uncertain thing I didn’t want to be committed to yet. I could picture the good father he’d be, lugging his bulk onto the floor to play blocks or Legos, singing the sweet Samoan lullabies he sang in my ear after making love. Our baby would look like a toy in the crook of his arm.

            But finally, I had to open the box, I had to know. The phone rang while I was still in the bathroom. It was Dee, the aide at the care center. Her voice was whispery. “I could probably check Jake out today, if you want,” she said. “I know how anxious you must be to have him home.” Anxious? She obviously wasn’t taking notes on my erratic visiting schedule. I watched the paper strip turn pink. So it was true.

            “What if he stays until Friday?” I said. I was sweating and I waved the strip as if it could cool me.

            A big sigh from her, like she was phoning in a windstorm. “Friday?”

            “Well, it’s just that there’s a lot to get ready, and I don’t have a place for him to sleep yet that doesn’t involve stairs.” Once you talked about the logistics, these people poured out the sympathy.

            “Oh dear, yes, you take your time. His insurance will run through the week, so don’t worry about that.”

            What if I never went to pick him up? “Well, then, Saturday it is,” I said, smiling, savoring the extra day. I hung up quickly. The press would show up at the care center and film me wheeling him into an equipped van we’d be loaned. I would need to smile.

            Semo was coming over later to cook enchiladas. Margaritas and chips first, and lovemaking, where I could sit atop him, pushing up and down, rocking the thimble-sized baby sleeping inside.

About the Author 

Martha Clarkson

Martha Clarkson’s writing can be found in The Seattle Times, Clackamas Literary Review, Seattle Review, Portland Review, The Sun magazine, Mothering magazine, Feminine Rising, Quarter Past Eight, and Nimrod. She is the winner of the Anderbo Fiction Prize for the story “Her Voices, Her Room,” which has been produced as a podcast by PenDust Radio. She has two notable short stories in Best American Short Stories. Martha was a former poetry editor for Word Riot. Find her here: www.marthaclarkson.com