CHAPTER VIII
THE USUAL ALLOWANCES
It was raining that last night, and cold out, too. For a long time during those hours, Julia stood at the window of Paco's room at Cedars-Sinai looking out. Staring past the window's interior reflection of the room--Paco lying in the bed, their friends and loved ones (with one notable exception) banded around him, talking quietly to him, to each other--she could see the streaky red and white lights from the sluggish traffic moving through the rain on San Vicente Boulevard below: two dark and glistening. Impressionist paintings, one over the other, superimposed.
Everyone seemed to understand, that unlike the other setbacks Paco and Julia had braved during his illness, Paco wouldn't be walking away from this one. Paco wouldn't be going home.
People began arriving early in the day. Those who came, came to stay. They brought flowers. They brought food. Someone brought Mexican from Mrs.Garcia's, one of Paco's favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants, just across Third Street. No one was eating, but the room smelled like refried beans.
Everyone wondered about Jay Russo. Where was he? Messages were left for him at the Studio, at his apartment, at Musso & Frank's, at the other watering holes he frequented. He was ignoring his pager.
"He'll come," Paco murmured during one of the periods he was awake and had overheard someone asking about Jay.
Earlier in the evening, Paco asked for Davey. Julia handed her keys to Steve Quinn. Steve was their veterinarian. If anyone could smuggle Davey in, Steve would be the one. With five cats, any veterinarian they used was bound to play an important part in the life of the Berellis, but besides Jay, Steve was one of their closest friends. Julia and Paco considered him to be one of the most serif people they knew. They were charmed by the holes in his jeans, that the flannel shirts he always wore were always wrinkled (Julia could picture him performing the sniff test mornings when he was in a hurry). They also adored it that sometimes the sneakers he wore were from different pairs. And, like Julia, Steve was from Michigan. He had grown up one bedroom community over from where she grew up. They hadn't known each other then, but with his light gray eyes and shaggy blonde curls people occasionally mistook Steve and Julia for brother and sister.
Steve returned to the hospital an hour after he departed. He came into Paco's room carrying a Ralph's grocery bag. He had smuggled Davey, Paco and Julia's enormous, black and gray, yipes-stripes, completely cross-eyed cat (the First Prize recipient in the Living Category of the Studio's Kool Kitty Kompetition) into the hospital, nestled at the bottom of the bag, and undetected past the guards downstairs and the nurse station near Paco's room. Paco wanted to see all of their cats' dear and furry little faces, but Davey was the only one in the clouter who possessed the sang-froid required for a hospital visit.
Steve handed the bag to Julia, shooed everyone out into the corridor, then shut the door. Alone in the room, Paco and Julia watched as Davey did a vacuum-nose evaluation of the tubes and monitors to which Paco was attached (I don't know where we are, I don't know what all this weird junk is, but, yup . . . this is definitely my best buddy). Purring deeply, Davey fell head first against Paco's armpit. Julia sat down in the armchair nearest the bed. Paco turned and rubbed his nose in the feathery fur behind Davey’s ear.
Julia followed Paco's gaze and saw it fall upon the three clay pots atop the air conditioning unit under the window. All three were a size equivalent to a teacup. They were hand-coiled, unglazed and terra-cotta colored. Each piece was painted with tiny and intricate symbols (lines, squiggles, animal figures) in black. Paco kept the pieces of pottery with him wherever he and Julia moved, yet he never displayed them and always kept them packed away in a closet. Julia was surprised when she unpacked Paco's gym bag after he was admitted to the hospital and she discovered he brought them this time. She had also witnessed Sal's surprise (dismay?) when he had spotted them after his arrival the day before yesterday. The pots were Juanita's creations.
Paco looked at Julia then. "I’ve got some unfinished business," he said. "Kind of a dying wish, I guess"
He buried his nose more deeply in Davey’s fur, then spoke through the glossy stuff. "I didn't think it was something I cared about . . . I guess I do, and I'm out of time." He smiled with regret. (How did this crazy nightmare get so far?)
The room began revolving in a giddy orbit around Julia.
For eighteen months Paco and Julia had been waging a war for Paco's life with all the forces they could marshal, all the courage they could find, and all the strength they had. It was a war they confidently expected to win, if only because the alternative was too terrible to even contemplate. This was the first admission either of them had made to the other that they were going to lose.
Before Paco could frame this dying request, this last wish, the nurse came in to adjust his morphine drip, and they were busted.
"No pets," she said. "That cat has to go."
Moments later, as Steve scooped Davey up and returned him to the grocery bag, Julia and Steve saw the pain in Paco's eyes. He would never see Davey again, or feel the warmth of his yummy and muscular body, or enjoy the sweet essence of his silky fur.
It was the only time during the eighteen-month ordeal that Julia saw Paco cry.
"How’s it going?" Sal said coming back into the room.
"Okay," Steve said. "But I think Julia needs some air."
Sal nodded, then looked at Julia with concern. "Go," he ordered, then took Paco's hand. "I'll be right here."
Julia trailed behind Steve as he carried Davey in the grocery bag toward the elevator. They were flanked by two guards from downstairs. Everyone was silent as the elevator descended, and silent as the guards walked them through the lobby and out the doors to the emergency room parking lot. Davey meowed a few times from the bag as Steve used his other hand to propel Julia to the deserted corner of the ground level parking lot where he left his pickup.
Fresh air was just an excuse. Somehow Steve had realized that the finality of Paco’s parting with Davey pushed Julia beyond her limit. Steve also knew she didn't want, under any circumstances, to fall apart in front of Paco.
She stood there for a moment trying to breathe, but she couldn’t get it right. Something as simple as breathing was suddenly as beyond her as quantum physics. When the sobs came, they were dry and silent and awful. Steve put Davey in the pickup, then put his arms around Julia and comforted her as best as he could. This was nothing new.
During Paco's illness, Steve's clinic--Steve, himself--was Julia's sanctuary. Whenever her anxiety about Paco overwhelmed her, it was to Steve she would turn. She would arrive unannounced, head for the infirmary at the back, where it was busy and usually cheery. She was always welcome. Talking with Liz (Steve's partner) and Steve, especially Steve, about anything but Paco's illness, would bring Julia down off the ceiling.
Late one afternoon, a man--not a regular client--arrived with a big, gray and healthy-looking cat squirming in his arm. The man said his son had died that morning of AIDS. The son wanted the cat put down because it had diabetes and the young son was afraid no one would care for the beloved cat after he was gone. It wasn't exactly a last request, but the young man had had strong feelings about it.
Steve tried to reason with the grieving father. He told him there was every chance the cat could live a long and good life, and that if the man didn't want the cat, he (Steve) would find it another home, a good home where it would be loved, and would receive the proper care. The man wasn't interested.
"It's against my policy to destroy viable life." Julia heard Steve say. The two men were standing in the corridor, outside one of the treatment rooms. Julia and Liz were now in the doorway of the infirmary.
"Fine," he said. "Then I'll find another vet who will. Barring that, I'll do it myself."
Steve was quiet for a moment, then nodded his head. He had a stammer that occasionally emerged when he was in the presence of someone who made him uncomfortable, but there was never even a inkling of it when he was acting in his professional capacity.
"Have it your way," Steve said without the slightest waver.
With great care, he liberated the frightened cat from the man's arms. The cat immediately grew calmer. "You aren't required to stay." Steve said then.
"I'm not leaving until it's over."
Steve nodded and showed him into the treatment room. A moment later, Steve came into the infirmary. Liz and Julia watched as he reached into the meds locker. As he prepared a syringe, his eyes grimly met Liz's. Carrying the syringe, he returned to the treatment room where the man was waiting. A short time later Steve came back into the lab carrying the big gray cat, now limp in his arms. Down the corridor, they heard the man sobbing as he departed. Steve walked to the bank of stainless steel cages built into one of the walls. Eyeing Steve, Liz opened one of the unoccupied cages.
An hour later, as it was growing dark outside, Steve, Julia and Liz watched as the gray cat came in for a safe landing. Steve had injected the cat all right, knocked him all the way out in the grieving man's presence. But he had used a non-lethal preparation. Steve christened the cat Bill. Although Steve had two dogs and two other cats at home already, he incorporated Bill into his family. Bill quickly became the most beloved animal in Steve's household.
Back inside the hospital, coming out of the elevator, Julia spotted Jay sitting alone in the waiting room with his head in his hands, pushing back the dark sproings of his short, wiry hair.
"How long have you been here?" she asked as she entered.
He looked at her with his light and fierce green eyes, always a surprising focal point in his flushed, soft-featured face. His eyes were now rimmed in red. Julia sat down in one of the mauve plastic bucket chairs next to him. He was dressed just like Paco usually dressed; the jeans, the workshirt, the boots, the expensive tie. Unlike Paco, Jay's tie was usually food-spotted, and his shirt tail often bunched north over his belt. Julia believed that Jay always felt in competition with Paco. Whenever Paco bought a new toy (motorcycle, snowboard, house, etc.), Jay always seemed to need to go him one better. In an ungenerous moment after Paco's diagnosis, Julia wondered to herself what Jay would do to top the leukemia.
"I don't know," he said, "...A while." He scrubbed his already red-rimmed eyes with his fists. "Has he been asking for me?"
"No. He's making the usual allowances," Julia said. She got to her feet. "He just assumed you'd get here when you could."
Paco always made the usual allowances for Jay. Sometimes Julia made them, too. But not that night when Jay should've been glued to Paco, and was instead cowering in here. "Staying away today," said Julia to Jay, "is the most sans serif thing you've ever done to him."
When Julia returned to Paco's room, Paco was asleep. She took up her post at the window again. In the reflection she could see Sal caressing Paco's face. She heard him almost crooning to Paco, "My boy, my lovely, lovely boy . . . " Libby stood with her hands on Sal's shoulders. Uncle Nick was on the other side of the bed. He was stroking Paco's hand.
Julia smiled at her parents and at her sister Renee, who were near the end of the bed. Take strength and courage from our love, their gaze back at her said. Next, Julia studied the sad faces of their friends.
What would they, she, the world do without Paco?
Because her composure was again about to leave her flat, Julia turned back toward the window. Looking out at the wet and whispery dark, she wished she and Paco could somehow just go back to the beginning and do it all again.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF SALVATORE BERELLI
September 16, 1960
To be honest (and at this point, this journal is the only place for that), although I've tried to deny it to myself, I have been completely lost since the first moment I saw Juanita the morning following my arrival. Worse yet (or better, God forgive me) I know she is not unmoved by me because she finds ways to have about half a dozen "accidental" encounters with me every day. But even when I don't see her, I still see her: her wide, easy smile, her long delicate fingers working the clay, the oh so vulnerable and elegant nape of her lovely neck.
Dewey 's oozing pain that she hasn't yet come to his home to initiate the wedding ceremonials. I'm oozing guilt.
(to be continued)
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