“Don’t worry,” I said. “The only people I know are other English teachers. We have no sway.”
Eddie was quiet. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“What? You didn’t say anything.”
Eddie nodded. “Thank you. I’ve made an important decision,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m never going to be angry at anyone ever again,” he said, and then he fell asleep.
It was another hour before his name was called. The waiting room for oncology patients was always quiet, unlike some other waiting rooms where they kept a television going with HGTV. In the oncology waiting room, people were less likely to talk on their phones. They conserved their energy so as to take inventory of the heart’s collected shards of glass. We were in the quiet car now, both the patients and their guests. I read the novel I’d brought while Eddie slept. Every now and then I put my hand on his wrist because I could.
The nap did him a world of good. When at last we were taken back to the hallway of frosted-glass pods, we were given the same room on the left that we’d had the time before. The coincidence made us giddy—giddy!—though only a hopeless person would see such a thing as a promising sign. Eddie handed me the cane and settled himself back into the dentist’s chair. “Let Jonathan know I’ll be keeping you out later than expected,” he said.
“I will.”
“I’ve been reading about impermanence. That’s the part about retiring that no one tells you, how you get to read any book you want to read.”
It was a different nurse than the one he had the last time, but right away we liked her just as much. One imagines generalizations could be made about oncology nurses: nice people.
“No port,” she said, looking at his chart. “Old-school.”
“I don’t come in much,” he said.
“Good for you,” she said. “And good for me. You’re keeping my skills fresh.” She left and came back with her packaged needle on a silver tray, her clear plastic bags. She rolled the vein with her gloved fingers until she got it where she wanted it. “Stick and a sting,” she said.
I always turned away.
“What about impermanence?” I asked once the nurse had gone.
“That’s all there is!” he said cheerfully. “Every single thing is going to end, so you need to get used to it. Then, when our time comes, we won’t get stuck in the bardo.”
“Eddie, what are you talking about?”
“Thebardo,” he said. “You know. You read the George Saunders novel. Apparently death can be confusing, and it’s hard for the dead person to accept that they’re dead because no one likes change and life is all we’ve ever known. The bardo is supposed to be a place of transition, but if you don’t accept your death, you get stuck there, which would be like getting stuck in Penn Station for eternity.”
Perish the thought of such a perishing. “I think you’d know if you were dead,” I said, but the truth was I’d never thought of it one way or the other.
Eddie shook his head. “Think of Lucas lying in the lilac bed. Do you think he accepted the fact that he was dead? Lucas, who still hadn’t accepted that the Positivity series dried up in 1985? Lucas, who, at ninety, refused to sell his five-thousand-square-foot house with no bedroom on the first floor because he didn’t like change? What if his soul is still out there in the grass somewhere, yelling for your mother to come get him up?”
“Then it’s good she sold the house.” Though it probably wasn’tthe sort of thing that should be disclosed to potential buyers.
“You’re supposed to talk to the dead person right after he or she dies. Talk to them for a couple of days, keep telling them they’re dead. Tell them it’s fine, this life is over, and now they need to go.”
“Where was he supposed to go?”
“Forward,” Eddie said firmly. “It’s a whole process.”
“There are a lot of other things I’d have to accept before I could accept that Lucas is still in the lilac bed.”
“Sure, sure, but this is chemo,” Eddie said. “For the sake of this conversation, let’s say it’s true and this is the way the system works: no one wants to change even though change is the never-ending engine of existence. We are attached to our life, so we want to stay alive even though we know we’re going to die. Are you following me here?”
“I am and I’m not,” I said. I didn’t like where it was going.
“So by practicing nonattachment and recognizing impermanence, we might have a happier life, and we might have an easier death.”
“Are you telling me this for a reason?”
