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Before I could explain who Elaine was, Sue Atkins said, "Yes, that would be all right--I've heard all about Elaine." (I didn't ask Mrs. Atkins what she'd heard about me.)
Elaine was teaching that term--grading final papers, I explained on the phone. Perhaps we could come to Short Hills on a Saturday; there wouldn't be all the commuters on the train, I was thinking.
"The children will be home from school, but that will be fine with Tom," Sue said. "Certainly Peter knows who you are. That trip to Europe--" Her voice just stopped. "Peter knows what's going on, and he's devoted to his father," Mrs. Atkins began again. "But Emily--well, she's younger. I'm not sure how much Emily really knows. You can't do much to counter what your kids hear in school from the other kids--not if your kids won't tell you what the other kids are saying."
"I'm sorry for what you're going through," I told Tom's wife.
"I always knew this might happen. Tom was candid about his past," Sue Atkins said. "I just didn't know he'd gone back there. And this terrible disease--" Her voice stopped again.
I was looking at the Christmas card while we spoke on the phone. I'm not good at guessing young girls' ages. I wasn't sure how old Emily was; I just knew she was the younger child. I was estimating that the boy, Peter Atkins, would have been fourteen or fifteen--about the same age poor Tom had been when I'd first met him and thought he was a loser who couldn't even pronounce the time word. Atkins had told me he'd called me Bill, instead of Billy, because he noticed that Richard Abbott always called me Bill, and anyone could see how much I loved Richard.
Poor Tom had also confessed to me that he'd overheard Martha Hadley's outburst, when I was seeing Mrs. Hadley in her office and Atkins had been waiting for his turn. "Billy, Billy--you've done nothing wrong!" Mrs. Hadley had cried, loud enough for Atkins to have heard her through the closed door. (It was when I'd told Martha Hadley about my crushes on other boys and men, including my slightly fading crush on Richard and my much more devastating crush on Kittredge.)
Poor Tom told me that he'd thought I was having an affair with Mrs. Hadley! "I actually believed you'd just ejaculated in her office, or something, and she was trying to assure you that you'd done nothing 'wrong'--that's what I thought she meant by the wrong word, Bill," Atkins had confessed to me.
"What an idiot you are!" I'd told him; now I felt ashamed.
I asked Sue Atkins how Tom was doing--I meant those opportunistic illnesses I already knew something about, and what drugs Tom was taking. When she said he'd developed a rash from the Bactrim, I knew poor Tom was being treated for the Pneumocystis pneumonia. Since Tom was in hospice care at home, he wasn't on a ventilator; his breathing would be harsh and aspirate--I knew that, too.
Sue Atkins also said something about how hard it was for Tom to eat. "He has trouble swallowing," she told me. (Just telling me this made her suppress a cough, or perhaps she'd gagged; she suddenly sounded short of breath.)
"From the Candida--he can't eat?" I asked her.
"Yes, it's esophageal candidiasis," Mrs. Atkins said, the terminology sounding oh-so-familiar to her. "And--this is fairly recent--there's a Hickman catheter," Sue explained.
"How recent is the Hickman?" I asked Mrs. Atkins.
"Oh, just the last month," she told me. So they were feeding him through the catheter--malnutrition. (With Candida, difficulty swallowing usually responded to fluconazole or amphotericin B--unless the yeast had become resistant.)
"If they have you on a Hickman for hyperalimentation feeding, Bill, you're probably starving," Larry had told me.
I kept thinking about the boy, Peter; in the Christmas photo, he reminded me of the Tom Atkins I'd known. I imagined that Peter might be what poor Tom himself had once described as "like us." I was wondering if Atkins had noticed that his son was "like us." That was how Tom had put it, years ago: "Not everyone here understands people like us," he'd said, and I'd wondered if Atkins was making a pass at me. (It had been the first pass that a boy like me ever made at me.)
"Bill!" Sue Atkins said sharply, on the phone. I realized I was crying.
"Sorry," I said.
"Don't you dare cry around us when you come here," Mrs. Atkins said. "This family is all cried out."
"Don't let me cry," I told Elaine on that Saturday, not long before Christmas 1981. The holiday shoppers were headed the other way, into New York City. There was almost no one on the train to Short Hills, New Jersey, on that December Saturday.
"How am I supposed to stop you from crying, Billy? I don't have a gun--I can't shoot you," Elaine said.
I was feeling a little jumpy about the gun word. Elmira, the nurse Richard Abbott and I had hired to look after Grandpa Harry, ceaselessly complained to Richard about "the gun." It was a Mossberg .30-30 carbine, lever-action--the same type of short-barreled rifle Nils had used to kill himself. (I can't remember, but I think Nils had a Winchester or a Savage, and it wasn't a lever-action; I just know it was also a .30-30 carbine.)
Elmira had complained about Grandpa Harry "excessively cleanin' the damn Mossberg"; apparently, Harry would clean the gun in Nana Victoria's clothes--he got gun oil on a lot of he
r dresses. It was all the dry-cleaning that upset Elmira. "He's not out shootin'--no more deerhuntin' on skis, not at his age, he's promised me--but he just keeps cleanin' and cleanin' the damn Mossberg!" she told Richard.
Richard had asked Grandpa Harry about it. "There's no point in havin' a gun if you don't keep it clean," Harry had said.
"But perhaps you could wear your clothes when you clean it, Harry," Richard had said. "You know--jeans, an old flannel shirt. Something Elmira doesn't have to get dry-cleaned."
Harry hadn't responded--that is, not to Richard. But Grandpa Harry told Elmira not to worry: "If I shoot myself, Elmira, I promise I won't leave you with any friggin' dry-cleanin'."
Now, of course, both Elmira and Richard were worried about Grandpa Harry shooting himself, and I kept thinking about that super-clean .30-30. Yes, I was worried about Grandpa Harry's intentions, too, but--to be honest with you--I was relieved to know the damn Mossberg was ready for action. To be very honest with you, I wasn't worrying about Grandpa Harry as much as I was worrying about me. If I got the disease, I knew what I was going to do. Vermont boy that I am, I wouldn't have hesitated. I was planning to head home to First Sister--to Grandpa Harry's house on River Street. I knew where he kept that .30-30; I knew where Harry stashed his ammunition. What my grandpa called a "varmint gun" was good enough for me.
In this frame of mind, and determined not to cry, I showed up in Short Hills, New Jersey, to pay a visit to my dying friend Tom Atkins, whom I'd not seen for twenty years--virtually half my life ago.
