Brian Keene: Terminal

When I was a kid, one of my mom’s boyfriends was a big Iron Maiden fan. He’d listen to them all the time while working on his car or puttering around the house. Being a hip-hop fan, I was never into heavy metal, but a snatch of lyric came back to me now: “As soon as you’re born, you’re dying.” I hadn’t understood the line at the time, and he’d explained to me that from the very moment we’re born, our cells begin to break down, effectively starting the dying process. It continues all of our lives, until we’re old and gray. It was happening inside me as I stood there on the hill, except that while my good cells were dying, bad cells were growing; growing at an alarming rate, according to the doctor.

I glanced down at the ground. Michelle and I had once made love on that very spot when we were in high school. We’d stopped coming to The Hill after we got married, but sometimes we’d joke about dropping by again, just for old times’ sake. Now we never would. That was when the full enormity of it sank in, hitting me with the impact of an airplane slamming into the ground. I sank to my knees.

Soon, I wouldn’t feel the wind in my hair and see the green leaves sprouting or the dandelions blooming. I wouldn’t feel the sun or be able to watch the clouds floating by overhead. I would never attend my high school reunion and laugh at those same National Honor Society shitheads who I’d sold pot to, the same ones who were working in fast-food joints or selling used cars now. Michelle and I wouldn’t be going on vacation, or even to the bowling alley, and John and Sherm were going to have to hang out by themselves at Murphy’s Place on Friday nights, and my foreman was going to have to find somebody else to run the Number Two molding machine at the foundry, because I wasn’t going to be doing it for much longer. I wouldn’t be standing there for eight to ten hours a day, wincing every time a hot piece of metal landed on my arm, or picking foundry dirt out of my teeth and ears, or rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet because they hurt from standing so long, and even that I would miss because feeling pain at least meant that I was still alive.

I was never going to catch the new X-Men movie or watch the Orioles make it back to the World Series or see the Steelers go to the Super Bowl and kick some ass. I would never find out what happens next season on 24 or hear the new Wu Tang Clan disc. I’d never take T.J. sledding down the same hill John and I had rocketed down as kids. Never know what Michelle was getting me for my birthday this year, because there would be no more birthdays or anniversaries or Christmases, because no, Virginia, there is no fucking Santa Claus and even if there was, the only thing the fat fuck would leave in my stocking would be a lump of coal, shaped like a tumor and growing at an alarming rate.

I coughed more blood and stood back up. I was scared and my hands shook so bad I could barely light my next cigarette. But eventually I got it lit, so that was okay. The nicotine coursed through my body like rocket fuel.

Never again would I stand in the doorway to T.J.’s bedroom late at night and just watch him sleeping, mystified and speechless at the sheer power of the love I had for him. I wouldn’t hold my wife while she slept next to me, stroking her hair and breathing her scent and feeling her warmth beneath the sheets. I would never hear them tell me they loved me, and I wouldn’t be able to tell them. At that moment, I wanted to tell them so bad. I got back in the truck, drove out to the cemetery, and visited my mother’s grave at the other side of town. It had been years since I’d stopped by, and it took me a while to find the tombstone because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was. There were no flowers or trinkets covering the spot, and brown, withered weeds had grown up around the stone.

“Hi, Mom.”

I noticed the wind had stopped blowing.

I stood there for a long time, smoking and thinking, and dying. I talked to Mom but she didn’t talk back—just like it had been when she was alive.

After a while, I got back in the truck and went home.

It was dark by the time I got home, and the lights were on in the trailer, their soft yellow glow shining out onto our scraggly crabgrass-and-dandelion yard. Our place wasn’t much; just a double-wide with shitty brown vinyl siding, and an old wooden deck that was starting to sag in the middle as the untreated lumber slowly rotted away. The trailer sat on a quarter acre lot with one anorexic tree and a prefabricated toolshed that John and Sherm helped me put together two summers ago. I’d always said that when I grew up, I wouldn’t live in a trailer—but of course, I’d been wrong.

I sat there in the darkness, smoking my cigarette down to the filter and trying to get my emotions in check. It was a struggle. Finally, I went inside.

When I walked through the door, Michelle had just finished giving T.J. a bath. She was sitting on the couch reading an Erica Spindler novel, and he was plopped down in front of the television, watching SpongeBob SquarePants and getting Goldfish cracker crumbs all over his pajamas.

“Hey, baby.” She looked up from her book. “How was your day? You’re a little late. I was starting to get worried.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and flopped down beside her.

“I went back to work after the doctor’s appointment. Worked a little overtime to make up the hours.”

“Daddy!” T.J. flew across the room and jumped in my lap, peppering me with wet, Goldfish cracker kisses.

“What’s up little man?” I ruffled his hair and hugged back, squeezing him tight. When I look back on all of this now, I think that moment with T.J. in my lap, more than anything, was the toughest. That’s the one that almost destroyed me.

I swallowed hard and forced a smile.

“Were you a good boy today?”

He nodded. “Guess what? At day care, Missy Harper said she liked me, and I told her she could be my girlfriend, but Maria is my girlfriend too.” He shoved another fistful of crackers in his mouth. His cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s.

“T.J., don’t stuff so much in your mouth,” Michelle scolded. “I thought Anna Lopez was your girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” I said, “and what about that little blond girl, Kimberly? Didn’t she like you too?”

“They’re all my girlfriends.” He grinned around a mouthful of half-chewed crackers, then jumped down from my lap.

“My little Mack Daddy is a player.” I laughed. “Like father, like son, right babe?”

Michelle punched me in the shoulder, and T.J. giggled.

“So what’d the doctor say?”

My mouth opened but nothing came out. I wanted to tell her. Believe me, I wanted to tell her more than anything in the world. I was fucking scared, and Michelle could have made it better. She wasn’t just the woman I loved. She was my best friend. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt her that way. I couldn’t bring her world crashing down. Maybe I just needed time to process it, but at that moment, I couldn’t let Michelle know.

I’ve often wondered if things would have been different if I had.

“Everything’s cool,” I lied. The words felt stuck in my throat. “Just a bug. Must have picked it up at work.”

“A bug? You’ve been sick for a couple weeks, Tommy. And you’ve lost weight too. You don’t look good.”

“I know, I know. But he said it wasn’t anything to worry about. Besides, I needed to drop a few pounds anyway. Those baggy jeans weren’t getting so baggy anymore.”

One of my Mom’s boyfriends used to say, “If you’re gonna lie, Tommy, then lie big.” That was what I did. I lied real fucking big. It was a preview of the days to come.