Spooky; some nickname, something she had acquired after pulling off an eerie near-miracle that saved several lives. In turn, one was due her.
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold .
Her long wavy tresses got lopped short once medic' wonders destroyed them wonders that made her normal steady hands move to a beat of an elusive butterfly; he eyes, bright and laughing, turned dark and shadowed. She, Arline, and I were thought of as the triumvirate. It seemed only fitting the three of us should be together when the spindly fingers of death reached out an' wrapped around our throats to squeeze off our breaths.
I was the naive one the only one who refused to believe that Spooky wouldn't get that miracle, especially when she was so close to being accepted into a program that offered hope. And somehow I thought that if people were in the hospital preparing to vacate the mortal world they looked like they were ready to tip over the edge. But with Spooky, she stayed uncannily together, making it all the more difficult for me to grapple with the eating away of her lungs, brain.
It started out with my entering the white antiseptic smelling hospital room; I teased her,
"Get back to writing."
As artists, Spooky and I shared a world different from most. I remember how we'd sneak
private glances at writers' meetings, she usually rolling her eyes; how we exchanged manuscripts and scribbled helpful or nasty, and sometimes funny, comments in red felt pen on crisp, nicely
typed white paper; and the lunches we shared where I'd spill drinks over manuscripts or
photographs, making her shake her head, look hopelessly at me. Endlessly we talked about
writing, about paper-people and pulp-style crises. I liked how we, game-style, debated the merits
of an Updike over a Sheldon.
Too, there were long talks about her illness, and how she decided to opt out of life if it got really bad. Forever we bantered the existence of God, her premise that He did not exist, mine
a Pascalian Wager. She'd snap back with '"That's a cop-out" each time I'd offer the stand-by argument that it was safer to believe than not to. That she was opinionated, stubborn, egotistical, and abrasive is only half true, as her whole was greater than any of her parts.
She overlooked my grumpiness when I was sick with mono or tired from long nights of checking ill-written college essays passed off as glossy literature; she was honest about my
writing, often making me stretch for bigger and better things, with her famous words echoing in
my head '] can't see your images! Make pictures."
I liked best how she'd throw her head back, white teeth showing, and laugh laughter like a splash of scalding water on ice cubes sharp, caustic--a laugh that made my sometimes ridiculous perceptions seem even more absurd, or my most serious behavior turn light and relaxed.
Leaning over the bed rail, I said, "I got a sitter tonight. Jimmy and I can at last be alone." I
remember how she smiled, weakly joked about my husband's and my activities while on a mini-
vacation. It felt wrong leaving her. Polk, her husband, insisted I go, that he'd call if he needed me.
At the resort, the ocean spray felt refreshing; tension seeped from my muscles; my
overworked mind mellowed. For the first time in months I wasn't tormented with plotmaking,
fact-checking, or yelling children, and jingling phones. Still, flashes of Spooky lying in the
hospital zipped constantly through my head.
When I returned home Sunday the sitter greeted me at the front door "Your friend's
husband called from the hospital several times. He wants you to call him immediately."
My fingers twittered as I dialed. "Polky? What's wrong?"
Over the phone his voice quivered: "Nan, come here right away."
My husband and I rushed to the hospital.
I couldn't believe it. There my friend, at 33, a year older than I, lay peacefully, a grin on
her face. I said to her after my husband left with her daughter, "You're not sick. I worried about
you the whole time I was gone, then hurried over here, and look at you, lying there smiling."
Polk winked. When he looked down at his wife I saw a shiny water drop slip out from the
comer of his eye. He patted my hand, then followed his mother-in-law out the door.
I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, noting that the color of Spooky's face was no different than that of the sheet she lay on. "Want me to read?" She pointed to Amelia in the stack of books. "Your story in this issue?" I asked, rising and going for it.
She shook her head. Mumbled: "I won't be alive for it."
"You're gonna out-live me," I snapped back.
A nurse and technician came in. Sweat ran down the sides of their faces as they pushed-pulled, fingers shaking, a long needle in-out of Spooky's tender swollen veins.
"No more," she cried. "Let me go in peace!" She looked at me with her sad, brown eyes.
"Tell them to catheterize me."
When the nurse returned with the catheter, I rose to leave. Spooky yanked on my arm,
wanting me to stay, share in her utter privacy. I wet my lips, listening in agony as she screamed
each time the nurse tried repeatedly to run the catheter into her bladder. After the torturer had
gone, I asked Spooky if she wanted me to call our other writer friends. "Sharon? JoAnna? Chris?" I knew Arline, the tip of our triangle, would be along soon.
She shook her head. Beckoned for me to tilt my ear against her oxygen mask where she
struggled to say, "I don't want them to see me weak like this."
During that long morning I managed to sneak out into the hall and sit in the lobby with
Spooky's mother, Gloria, who sat rigid, weeping convulsively into a crinkled blue tissue. I looked
at Gloria's red, swollen eyes, said, "Spooky's gotten through rough times before. She'll make this."
Gloria rasped in her Cuban accent, 'No oxygen left."
I pulled back, stared at her. Was that possible? To lose oxygen like air seeping out of a
balloon? '~hat ...does that mean?"
Gloria held my hand tightly. "You, my daughter, so young." She shook her head. I felt like I was five years old, not understanding what this woman knew that I didn't. She wiped her runny nose, wailed, "Her lungs are not making oxygen."
'Not making oxygen?" I asked dumbly.
"The doctors say . . . 24 hours."
I remember the day, its unfolding a constant ache in my body. Through the long hours I
read short stories and poetry to Spooky, one of her favorites being Frost's "Nothing Gold Can
Stay":
. . Then leaf subsides, to leaf . . . Nothing gold can
stay."I'm gold," she huffed-puffed through the fogged over wide plastic mask 'Nothing gold can stay."
I kidded, "You're more like coal...."
She winked. Dozed off, sweetly asleep. 'Nothing gold can stay.' Polky brought his guitar in and played folk songs. Spooky's fingers curled around my thumb; I sang to her. Poorly. I saw Polk swallow hard, quickly swipe at his watery pink eyes. A lump rubbed raw my throat. Tears washed my cheeks. Spooky mumbled something. I didn't need to ask her to repeat it; I know she didn't want us to cry.
Polky sang, 'If you miss the train I'm on...."
My scratchy voice tried: ". . . know that I am gone." And I saw her grin, laughing at us. I
laughed, too. She squeezed my hand. I nodded, unable to stop my tears from dropping onto her
puffy porcelain-white fingers. Polky turned and faced the window, sniffling. I grabbed a poem,
stared at the black print, unable to do anything more superior. My peripheral vision saw coming
down the long hallway the third of our triad.
In the corridor I said, "I've been trying to get you!"
Arline hugged me, sobbed, "This is the end, then."
I broke the embrace. "The end? No. She'll make it."
Around six that night, Arline and I went to the airport to pick up Spooky's sister and
father, he said, "How is she?"
"Okay, " I answered right away. Arline shot me a look.
We returned to Spooky trying to scribble a note: "A good time was had by all." Arline and
I glanced at each other. By the penmanship, we could see the ongoing nerve damage.
For the next nine hours we sat with Spooky, talking to her even when we knew she
couldn't hear because her mind would drift into some unknown realm. Our rest periods consisted
of sitting out in the hallway lobby, staring at the ceiling, floors; sometimes telling stories to keep
our minds off what was going on inside the room a few feet away.***
By 2:30 am. my body gave out. My eye sockets burned and my mind cried for sleep. "I've
got to get some sleep, Ar," I said. "And Spooky's daughter stayed ovemight at my house and I
have to get her and my kids up in a few hours for school."
We drove the short piece to my house where we collapsed into a restless sleep.
It was about seven in the morning when Arline had gone back home to Cambndge, 40
minutes away, to take care of her ill sister-in-law. I remember I was standing in the doorway
checking my pockets for car keys when Spooky's nine-year-old asked, "How's my mom?"
I thought about it. My head filled with snapshots of how Spooky had looked earlier, before I had left her her face more flushed with color than it had been, looking pleased that her parents and sister and husband, and two best friends were gathered around her. I answered, "She looks better."
The little girl's eyes lit up as she jumped into the air, her fingers closed into a victory fist.
For a fleeting second I wondered if I had misled her, then I remembered Spooky was going to
make it.
Spooky was drowsing when I got to the hospital, slipping in and out of the dimension
holding the brink of elsewhere. When she awakened, I read to her:I wandered lonely as a cloud ....
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodilsBy her smile I could picture how she might have mentalIy painted it blue sky with wisps of white smoky clouds capping fields of green-stemmed yellow blossoms. Hour after hour I read to her, interspersed with Polk's guitar playing, or our reminiscing, talking to her, massaging her useless muscles, holding her hands, patting dry perspiration.
I distinctly recall it was noon when she said, her breathing labored, "This isn't fun
anymore." Her exact words. Arline and I believed she would do it one day because she had vowed that when the pain got too bad, she'd quit. Through chick vocal cords, she whispered: "Morphine." She closed her eyes; breathed hard, quick; said, "Lethal dose."
Spooky's mother cried, "No!"
Polky eyed the nurse.
I grabbed Spooky's hand, leaned over her, said into her ear, "No, Spook. It's not time." She looked up at me, my face over hers. Her tears didn't go unnoticed.
The doctor appeared soon after.
How strange it is that I recall his floundering phrases, searching eyes. Clearing a deep
voice reminding me of a slow-speaking athlete, he said, "Morphine. Fine. Slow drip . . . we'll start slow. Is that what you want? Or fast? Let's start slow; we'll increase it when you want. That's what you want?" He played with a pen in the pocket of his long white smock.
I stood to the side of him, my hands behind my back, against the wall. I watched him
fidget with his mustache, shift his stance. Listened to him trip over his words.
Spooky's mother said, "Pain medication. Relax her."
This time it was I who knew what Gloria didn't. Morphine would only reduce Spooky's
respiration. Was this her plan?
The doctor turned on his heels, clicking the pen rhythmically in his hand while saying,
"Three bags. We'll hang three bags."
'Three bagsful,' just like in the nursery rhyme.
An Episcopalian priest entered. Lingered. Tried talking to Spooky. Saving her? She
ignored him. He asked, "Can I pray for you?" She pointed to the doorway, he left. Then she turned to me, rasped, 'Nan, William Carlos Williams."
"What shall l say, because talk must? That l have found a cure . . . for the sick?"
I paused, looked into her eyes. She had that silly grin on her face, teasing. Her fingers
motioned me on.I will teach you my townspeople how
to perform a funeral
I closed the book. "I can't read this!" She was enjoying my wretchedness, I could tell by
the crinkles around her shadowed eyes, like how she had enjoyed the priest's anguish.
***
She dozed; the morphine had begun to work.
A few hours later I left her to make family dinner.
JoAnna, another writer, appeared unexpectedly while I sat having coffee. "What are you
doing here?" I asked.
"I stopped in to see Spooky first. Are you all right?"
I rubbed my eyes. "How was she when you left her?"
JoAnna's gaze lowered. "We kidded with her a little."
"I told everyone she'd make it! I just knew it!"
JoAnna frowned. "I don't know, Nan. She's in pain."
"But she's going to be fine. Spooky's a fighter." I rose to leave for the hospital. JoAnna got in step with me.
We walked down the hospital hallway, our sneakers noiseless against the tiled floor, each
to our own thoughts. Out of nowhere an aged bony-patient popped out of his room, dashed down
the hall, his gown flying open in the back, exposing his rear, the wheeled IV stand and the sole
wisp of hair on his head chasing after him. JoAnna and I looked at each other out of the comer of
our eyes and burst into laughter. Uncontrollable, inappropriate loud laughter. The more we looked at one another, the louder we howled. To this day neither of us can forget how we behaved, and how, in a way, nature had set us up as we entered Spooky's room still giggling. I had expected her to be lying there relaxed, a smile playing around her mouth, hearing us carrying on out in the hallway like two snickering kids in church.
Instead, the second I stepped across the threshold, a brick wall slammed into me. I inhaled
sharply, gasped for breath. The room's perfect silence slashed into my nerves. My survey swept
in the faces of gloom her whole family was assembled statue-like then settled on Spooky.
She lay there unseeing, I'm sure, as her clouded, filmlike eyes darted chaotically back and
forth in her head. Her body heaved grotesquely with each respiration. "She's worse," I mumbled,
afraid to admit it out loud.
Polk's gaze caught mine. "What happened?" I asked, trying to whisper, but I think
everyone heard me.
Massaging his wife's legs, Polky choked, "She was in pain. Wanted more morphine."
A shock went through my soft tissues like a high-voltage electrical current. I swallowed,
consciously forcing the lump down my throat. For some reason I stood awhile with my hands
pressing against my temples. Then slowly I walked up to the side of the bed, leaned over, kissed
her clammy forehead.
"Spook?" My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. Mesmerized with fright, I watched her
eyes shoot left and right . . . once beautiful eyes that were now thin and transparent with Death's
breath on them. "Want me to read? Spook?"
I was shaking, I know it. I remember standing there, knees bowed and vibrating, hands
trembling. This couldn't be happening. "Want me to read Frost?" I could have sworn, just a wee
bit, she moved her head. No one else saw it, but I'm sure it happened, just as sure as I heard the
sound of gurgling rales, smelled the sewer-like odor of decay, felt the gritty fear of Life's End
reaching out, touching. I saw the unplanned positioning of her loved ones: her husband at the right side of her, holding her left hand; I at the opposite side holding her right hand; her parents at the foot of the bed, her sister near me. JoAnna stood in the doorway, out of the way, but I could feel her eyes on me.
"Frost. I'll read Frost." It was so quiet, deadly quiet, in the room, that my voice bounced off the ceiling.
Tears poured out of Polk's eyes. He tried turning his mouth upward in a smile for me but
his lips trembled and he brushed his face with the back of his big hand.
"Arline should be here, too." I think I whined it. We all knew the triangle was incomplete
in its final seconds. I picked up the book I had left on the hospital stand; read: " 'Whose woods
these are I think I know....'" I looked up from the page. Spooky was the same; I read some more:These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promlses to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep . . .I took in a deep ragged breath. Saw my tears smear the print, and did nothing to hide them.
Then her eyes stopped moving. Fixed.
Polk and I glanced at one another. I turned, headed for the nurses' station, passing JoAnna. Later she told me I had said, "I don't believe this. She's dying and I'm reading poetry here." I have no memory of this but I believe JoAnna, for she did the same thing--wrote everything down as it happened. It took me three months before I could again write.
The nurse looked up when I said, "We need you in there." I returned to Spooky's silent
room where everyone stood exactly the same way I had left them.
Two nurses entered after me, checked the IV, pulse, positioned themselves around the bed. Waiting.
I was holding Spooky's hand, listening to Polk say, 'I don't understand. Her eyes have
stopped moving. What does this mean? Is she in a coma now?" His tone was sharp and brittle
with fear, the same fear that suffocated all of us.
The nurse near him said, "This is the natural order."
"I don't understand!" His voice shattered.
"This is how it is to be," she said softly.
"What does it mean? What does it mean?" Then suddenly he leaned over his wife's head
to grab my arm, cried, "What does it mean, Nan? What does it mean! Is she dying?"
Everlastingly I will remember those words.
I may have nodded; I'm not sure. I was trying to concentrate on stopping my tears from
wetting her hair, on how strangely her rib cage contracted, as if her chest were sucked back to her
spine, then released and immediately repeated. She made noises, an almost cyclic sighing. I
squeezed her hand. Counted her breaths.
One
Two
Three
And she stopped. Completely.
We all stood freeze-frame still, glued to our spots. A nurse passed a flashlight across
Spooky's glass-like eyes, then shook her head and shut off the machines. It was the sister who
screamed first. Threw her body over Spooky. The mother's flat palm smacked plaster over and
over again, her high-pitched voice screeching, "Oh God oh God!" The father turned, pressed his
face against the wall, his shoulders rocking. JoAnna darted out into the hall.
Polky hugged me, wept. I remember thinking his large form would protect me from this
suctioning of my beating heart out of its cavity.
The nurses tried to calm the sister who was pointing at Spooky, screaming, "Close her
eyes! For God's sake, close her eyes!"
We cried and moaned, went from one person's arms into another's. The nurses began
shepherding us through the doors, but Polky and I lingered. As if in step with marching caissons,
we walked to her bed, he to one side, I to the other. Across her unmoving chest, we clasped hands.
I whispered to her, "You're done with your miles, and I'll miss you." Everywhere through
me shot vice-like pain. Polk and I stood staring at her for a long time, saying nothing. Then I left,
giving him privacy with the woman he had held in his arms for fifteen years.
Polky, Spooky's family, and I agreed there would be no church service . . . for Spooky had
no God. Instead, we planned a "healing" where we would read her poetry and that of her favorite
poets.
She lay there unseeing . . . as her clouded, film-like eyes darted chaotically back and forth
in her head. Her body heaved with each respiration.***
On the night of the healing I wore my beret and dated bell-bottom blue jeans that Spooky
had always termed outrageous but befitting an artist. I remember standing in the small kitchen
helping Arline uncover the catered food to be set out buffet-style. I glanced up each time friends,
family, and other artists came trooping in, hour after hour, until it seemed mourners, like goo,
would seep through the building's seams.***
Note: After Spooky's death, her father committed suicide.
Ice snapped in buckets, glasses clinked, voices came strong and loud, weak and muffled,
music played her favorites while over and over again I answered to prodding questions, "No
funeral service; this is her way of saying good-bye."
It was time for the readings. As if a shot went through the room thick with people, the
chattering instantly stopped. My eyes panned the room quickly, seeing the older adults seated on
the couches, the younger ones leaning against walls and door frames. Movement came to a halt. I
wracked my brain to recall who read first. Arline or me? I don't know. Vaguely I remember saying
to the crowd that I had a poem to read to Polky, written by his wife for him.
Polk sat next to me. I said to the mourners, "I once asked Spooky why she always wrote
about death. She answered, 'I don't write about death; I write about life.' " My voice wobbled
when I began:
This night of pain morphine doesn't dull the prickly sense of fate. He rubs me down to
quiet my groans so I will not waken our daughter . . . And I accept . . . the firm strokes of his hand
as assurance . . . my family will go on without me. The whole world is not sick and dying. Only
me.
I looked up from the pages, saw old ladies shake their heads, trying to shape their tear-
wrenched faces into stoic masks, heard men honk loudly into hankies, saw young people cover
their eyes with spread fingers, and I knew how pleased Spooky would be that her creation had
affected each life in that room, in her death.
What happened from then on for months after reminds me of sitting in an old theater
watching montages of representations of life. To me it seemed nothing would ever occur again
with any thread of cohesiveness.
She has left much besides her writing: the philosophy to live life every minute, and to be
in control in writing, in living, in paun, and in sorrow.
I understand the mourning process for me is not over.
I have miles to go before I sleep.
End"And Miles to Go Before I Sleep"
Published: Sojourner; 45,000 circ.
anthology: 1989
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