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

“Slow down there, pardner,” I say, taking a deep breath. “You’re going to blow an artery. I’m asking this for your sake as much as for Burton ’s. You’ve got a brand-new kidney inside you, but if you subject it to all the revenge that’s in your system, you’re going to poison it faster than a-”

“It’s a strong kidney,” he reminds me. “It’s the kidney of a killer.”

“Oh, that fact has not escaped me,” I say. “But believe me, it’ll shrivel up and die against all the bitterness and self-pity you’ve accrued. You’ll have wasted it. You’ll prove yourself unworthy of it. I’m asking this for the sake of your life as much as for Burton ’s. You’re both my cousins. I want what’s best for both of you.”

“I’m sorry, Dan.”

“Larry, don’t you see that you’re trying to do to Burton exactly what was done to you, by Uncle Auguste? You want to screw him just as you yourself were-”

“I don’t see. I don’t care.”

“You have to see! You have to care! In the context of all the good that Burton has done, you have to let go of one or two bad things-”

“Never. He has to pay the price.”

“Larr-”

“The answer is no, Dan. He almost got a huge gift from you that he doesn’t deserve. But no. It will happen on my death. You can quote me.”

“Goddamn it, Larry-”

“Here’s what you don’t get,” Larry says, shading his eyes. His face has darkened. The baby pink flush has withdrawn itself into little pinpricks of rage through a thunderhead of gray. “What you don’t get is that it would be shameful for me not to do it. That I haven’t done it yet is shameful to me, and it will remain shameful until the day the deed is done. I’m doing it for my mutha, who was crying on her deathbed-”

“But on her deathbed, or wherever she is now, Larry-”

“Watch where you’re going with this, Dan-”

“-she would not have wanted you to avenge her death.”

A tear rolls down his cheek. “That’s strike two. You’ve been warned, Dan.”

“I don’t want to feel like I’m being threatened here, Larry. Haven’t I earned the right to say what I have to say?”

“Say it.”

“Here it is: I think you’re fixating on Burton instead of the real issue. Burton may have tried to screw your mother, or he may not have, I have no way of knowing, but what I do know is that you’re spending all your energy plotting revenge against him rather than doing the work you have to do.”

“What work?”

“The grief work. It’s too easy this way, Larry. You have to do a difficult thing, and that’s to accept that families die: yours, mine, everyones’s. They just die, that’s all. It’s life, Larry, and life’s a bitch. But the fact is that Burton ’s not responsible for their deaths, and obsessing about him is keeping you from feeling the rage-”

“What rage?”

“About everything! About the lousy cards you were dealt in life! About not having a father who taught you how to hit a baseball and about having a sister who killed herself without letting you use her kidney and about all the bad that’s ever been done to you, from your childhood on.”

Larry’s looking down at his hands.

“Hate Burton all you want, but keep that hate in a separate box, is all I’m saying. You know that’s what your mother would want you to do. She wouldn’t want you to injure Burton.”

He lifts his head to gaze at the scroll across the room. “Poor goldfish,” he says, “not enough room to turn around…”

I know my words have sunk in, but I need to nail this down. I pick up the cell phone and start tapping numbers.

“Who you calling?”

“ Burton, for you to tell him it’s over.”

But this is going too far. I’ve lost him. Larry gets up on one elbow, the neck vein throbbing. “One last time,” he says distinctly. “The answer is no.”

“All right,” I say, putting down the phone. “I’m going for broke here. Larry, not to be blunt, but don’t you think you owe me the one and only thing I truly want, after taking out two months to get you a kidney?”

“You know how I see it, Dan?”

“Tell me.”

“I see it that we’re even.”

“How you figure?”

“You got me a kidney. I got you a nice adventure to tell your kids. You can go home with a great saga for your friends, bragging rights from here to-”

“Jesus Christ, Feldman, you think I give a damn about-?”

“We’re even-steven. And notice I’m not even asking you for a cut, if you make this into a movie or something, though it would be nice if you could get Clint Eastwood to play me-”

“He’s like ninety years old, Larry.”

“Oh, yeah, I must still be a little misoriented. But don’t ask me for anything extra, that’s pushing it. And by the way, not that I’m not grateful for all you’ve done, because I am, but just in case you feel like doing something extra for me?”

“Yeah?”

“If you ever find yourself walking with Burton and a car is out of control coming toward you? Push Burton out of its path. Make sure he’s not hurt. Because I want it to happen to him my way.”

Neither of us knows what to say for a moment.

“In the good-news department, though, lying here with all this free time, I’ve come up with a killer invention: Autumn Foliage Sunglasses, the lenses flecked with paint for stay-at-home leaf peepers…”

Subjects are closed, all of them, as effectively as if he’s withdrawn his head into its shell and snapped it shut. If that’s how he sees things, I’ve banked no obligation. I’ve accumulated no leverage. Mary raises her eyebrows to me in sympathy, for the sucker punch that’s just laid me out cold.

Over the next few days, I prepare both of us for departure. Larry doesn’t really need me anymore while he recuperates. I book our flights-me to my family at home, after a good-bye to Jade in Beijing; Larry directly to Florida from Shi a few days afterward. I crate up his belongings, six boxes in all, and cab them to the post office so he’ll have nothing but a shoulder bag to tote home. The cost is fifty dollars per box, and it may take them a couple of months to get to Florida, but it would be four times that amount to do air. I figure he can make do with the delay.

My thrift is canceled out, though, by the overly lavish gifts Larry directs me to disburse. I take his MasterCard to the ATM time after time to get generous wads of cash for everyone. (“Every time I hear myself say ten thousand,” Larry says about the gift to Cherry “my heart jumps. I know it’s only about twelve hundred dollars American, but I have a hard time giving away ten thousand anything. Even pennies. Especially pennies. What can I tell you-the habits of an old penny collector.”) Also, I buy an ostentatiously expensive scotch for Dr. X that, naked of its velvet wrapping, fits in well with the parrots on his shelves. Word comes down that Dr. X is offering his personal Bentley and driver to take Larry to the regional airport three days after I leave. The generosity (and the self-interest) of the Chinese people goes on and on.

Luckily, just in case I’m getting overly fond of the place, the smog’s returned. We’re back to breathing Frappuccinos, even tastier than before. The sun’s a white token in the milky sky, like a zinc slug Larry once gave me to get into the subway free. But at least the smog’s dissipating somewhat from Larry’s brain. “800-555-1212,” he says. “Hey, look what I know. I didn’t know those numbers last week. Toll-free information. Now I can call the airlines and wrangle a disability upgrade.”

At the appointed time early one morning, checking out of the Super 2, I find my den mother the housekeeper and tell her I’m leaving.