Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

“I’m sorry, Dan.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. You’re doing the best you can.”

“No. I mean…for everything. Getting sick and being such a bother. I never meant for this to happen. I always thought I was going to make a million dollars and be in a position to take care of everyone else in the family, not have someone in the family take care of me.”

“You just rest, Larry. You’ve lined up a great surgeon, and I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”

He lies there, the vein in his neck pulsing so delicately as the Chinese Gleason keeps almost scalding his mouth on the red-hot phone. Now there really is a thunderstorm outside, not a false alarm but the real thing. It’s drenching our windows, and I’m glad we’re safe inside our cave.

“You know one thing I don’t get, Dan?”

“What’s that?”

“Why you agreed to come here in the first place, after what I tried to do to you with the FBI.”

“Water under the bridge, Larry. C’mon, it’s a no-brainer. Your cousin’s sick and you have the power to do something about it? Then what’s the question? You do it.”

He shakes his head, beyond him. “I guess you’re better in the forgiveness department than I am.”

“You kidding? I hold grudges worse than anyone. I’m just being…unpiglike. I’ve got a good life-how could I not help? And stop looking at me that way.”

“What way?”

“With stars in your eyes. Save it for Chinese mothers who find it in them to forgive Red Guards for stabbing their babies. For people who really do donate their kidneys to save their cousins. What I’m do ing should be standard operating procedure. It’s like you saying that being an organ donor should be our default. Same deal with helping each other-helping should be our default. If I hadn’t lifted a finger, then you could ask me why.”

He takes this in quietly, as the rainstorm drums against our window. “Funniest thing,” he says. “When I was outside before, freaked by all the signs as usual, I realized that I’m as lost in China as my futha was lost in America. Now I know what he must have felt like, not being able to read the language.”

The Chinese Gleason dumps the phone in a bucket of ice water and smiles with relief.

“I’m telling you, if I come to terms with my futha, that will be an added bonus of this trip, even if I don’t get a kidney. Imagine: a reconciliation, after he’s been dead twenty years.”

“Better late than never,” I say.

Outside, the lightning flashes, the thunder booms. On TV a new act: A policeman in a girdle and wig cries as he tries to explain something to a judge. Soon all the girdle-and-wig-wearing policemen in the courtroom are crying. The flood level rises to their knees.

“Know what I think, Dan?” Larry says.

“What’s that?”

He looks at me with panda eyes. “I think you’re sort of a black sheep yourself. Not in the traditional sense, maybe, but-”

“Baaa,” I say, silencing him. “And you know what I think?” I say.

“What?

“I think I came here because I love you.”

“I understand.”

“I never said that to you before, and I don’t even think I knew it before this moment, but that’s why I’m here.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you.”

That’s all. Only time we ever broach the subject. Mary’s right: I cannot leave my Larry. I don’t know how long it’ll take or what it’ll cost, but we’ll see it through together. Side by side in the semi-dark, with the flood of tears in the courtroom rising to hip level, we wait.

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish-very gently.

The thunderstorm seems to have chased summer out, and the October air is clear and cold. The call could come at any moment-we’re poised to spring into action-but the passage of time has actually made us less clutchy, curing us somewhat of our frantic American impatience. A kind of temporary peace has settled in. In our newfound forbearance, Mary’s fur coat makes sense all at once; I never understood that it could get chilly here. Even the acrylic sweater she gave me comes in handy; I wear it every day. Gone is the totalitarian pollution-there are gaps in the one-party smog-which I was actually getting fond of. That luscious ivory-gray smoke, with its tinge of fish stink, it’s become part of me, and me of it: We’ve been respiring together, China and me. Larry and I have been in Shi five weeks, in China a total of six, and without warning we’re witness to a lovely succession of serene, cloudless days, so clean we can see the tops of buildings at last. There they are, the uppermost windows with the shades wide open. It’s like having been held captive by someone who finally decides to be your friend and whips off his mask so you can see that his eyes are startling blue-like Larry’s!

For Larry has undergone a transformation, too. In the past six weeks, he’s been yanked away from everything safe and reliable in his life and been exposed to trauma and fear. Broken down to his core, it’s like he’s been depatterned so he could be reprogrammed. Long story short: He’s sampling parts of chicken that have not once in their lives been encased by KFC Styrofoam.

“Even if I don’t care for the food, it’s always arranged nicely,” he concedes.

But he is caring for the food! He’s switched loyalties from KFC mashed potatoes to Chinese sticky rice and has developed a hankering for Chinese eggplant. He even shows remarkable aptitude for chopsticks.

“Hey, you’re okay with those things,” I say.

“You eat enough takeout, eventually you pick up chopsticks,” he says.

Of course, “remarkable” is a relative term. Truth to tell, he uses chopsticks like a toddler uses paintbrushes: one in each hand, and both operating independently of each other.

But there’s no gainsaying his palate, which continues to prove far better than mine. We play a blindfolded tofu-testing game, and he blows me away. He’s letting down his guard in other areas, too. He relaxes enough to skip shaving on the days he’s scheduled for dialysis, figuring that the procedure is draining enough without his needing to get groomed for it. (To pick up the slack, I’ve taken to shaving more frequently, in case Dr. X decides to bestow a kidney on someone with a more reputable-looking companion.) Larry has also stopped begrudging me the time I spend with the Badminton Boys, even though he still contends they represent the competition (“kidneys don’t grow on trees,” he says, and he’s right). It’s all part of the general world change brought in by autumn. Fewer firecrackers are being sounded, as China gets back to business after its holiday season has passed. The dewy, stalwart Jade comes and goes several times with quickie visits, making sure all’s running smoothly for us. No more beaten-up toenails are on view, because everyone is thickly shod. Summer’s over.

Meanwhile, in what may constitute the greatest change of all, Mary is adding what Larry insists on calling a womanly touch to our cave: arranging his clothes according to season, sweeping his discarded pistachio shells into corners, even bringing a pet into our lives, sort of-thumbtacking onto the wall a scroll that features a goldfish that’s way too big for its bowl. It looks like it barely has room to turn around, but Mary says proudly, “We make nice home for him…and we, too!”

Yes, her English is improving. She immerses herself in her workbooks and now understands perhaps every fourth or fifth word Larry says. It’s not perfect-she’s still capable of breaking into squalls of laughter when asked how her parents passed away-but there’s enough common language between them that they can have a conversation like the following: