Tom Mendicino - Probation

“Do you ever preach?” I ask.

“Most weeks,” he says, telling me he’s an assistant weekend pastor of a small parish just over the state line.

“Can I come hear your sermon?”

“You don’t need an invitation to come to Mass.”

“I’d like that.”

“Fine.”

“Then maybe we could have breakfast. Go to the Country Buffet and pig out. My treat.”

He smiles, neither encouraging nor discouraging me.

It’s a pathetic scene, this needy little boy, begging his father for friendship, affirmation.

“Can I come back next week?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“God, what I must sound like.”

“You’re hurting.”

So are you. So are we all. But at least one hour a week I don’t need to do it alone.

I’ ve got a hole in my hip.

Sounds like a lyric from an old standard by Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hart.

I’ve got a hole in my heart.

I’ve got a hole where my heart used to be.

It’s the kind of song you’d hear in a piano bar, a wrinkled old pixie with Vaseline teeth crooning away. I’ll write down the lyrics and send them to my furry blond friend in Honolulu.

Anyway, playing here tonight…

I’ve got a hole in my hip.

My sister returns bearing gifts, a towel and ice. The last pack melted on my leg and all over the sofa and my boxers are dripping wet. She offers to go upstairs and fetch a dry pair, but I decline, saying they’d just be soaked in a few minutes. Then I relent, knowing I’m selfishly depriving her of the opportunity to play Big Nurse in the Nocera family medical melodrama.

I reach for the remote and change channels. It’s late afternoon, the Day After. I’m exhausted. The oncologist says I should be feeling better tomorrow. I hope not. This provides the only acceptable excuse for dropping out. Soon enough, the routine will start all over again…

…Up before seven, a quick j.o., swallow coffee from a paper container (blue, with a frieze of Greek soldiers, like the Parthenon) and chew on a powdered doughnut, sing along, loudly, to the car radio, find a parking space, take the “shortcut” through the ER (“Hey, Steve.” “Hey.” “Sorry, gotta run.”), squeeze into the elevator (chattering nurses in soft, blowsy smocks; young orderlies, all hard muscles beneath those loose green scrubs; octogenarians, beyond gender, being wheeled to MRI), stop at the nurse’s station, ask if she’s awake, ask what kind of night she had, ask when the oncologist is making rounds, remember forgetting something, take the elevator back down, hang around the locked door to the Gift Patch, wait another five minutes until it opens at nine, buy a couple dollars’ worth of peppermint patties, stall a little longer leafing through the tabloids (Oprah’s Diet Secrets!: she has a personal trainer and private chef on call twenty-four hours a day. William and Harry’s Secret Anguish: fading memories of their mother), stop for a pee then back up the elevator, give my mother a good morning kiss and ask how she’s feeling, unwrap one of the peppermint patties, watch her place it on her tongue, squirm at the dry sucking sounds she makes, hope that it relieves the rancid metallic taste of the chemicals battling the tumors in her body, fall into the chair beside her bed, the day all but done by nine twenty in the morning, nothing to do but stare at the four walls, the television, my mother struggling to stay alive…

I never thought I’d miss having to make a six A.M. flight to Dayton or the eleven P.M. red-eye from Denver. But the situation has become desperate, necessitating THE LAST BEST HOPE, and I’m on leave begrudgingly approved by my Born Again National Sales Manager under mandate of federal law. I’ve appeased him by promising to be back in time to work the show at the Chicago Merchandise Mart.

Ouch. Stupid of me to roll over on the goddamn hole in my hip.

My sister is hovering in the corner of the room.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. Yes. Can you bring me a beer?”

She screws her face into a question mark.

“Are you allowed?”

“Of course I’m allowed. The treatment regimen is two Tylenol, as needed,” I say, exasperated.

I could have told the oncologist the preliminary blood work wasn’t necessary. There was only one possible donor, the results were inevitable, the conclusion foregone.

My mother and I are A Perfect Match.

My bone marrow is being transplanted in a sterile room in the hospital in Charlotte. I’ve got a hole in my hip where they drilled for oil. Now my mother and I are closer than ever, not simply a Match anymore, but One and the Same, the very cells of our blood generated from a single source.

“You ought to head back to the hospital,” I say as Regina hands me a can of beer. “I’ll be fine.”

“Do you need anything else before I go?” she asks.

“No.”

“Do you want me to bring anything back for you?”

“No.”

Once she’s gone I hobble around the kitchen looking for something to eat. I settle on another beer. It’s oppressively hot, even for Gastonia in early summer. I flop on the couch. It’s almost four o’clock, Oprah time. She’s my new best friend. My mother and I both love her. I don’t even begrudge her the ability to summon exercise gurus and gourmet chefs with the snap of her fingers. Those big cow eyes and her nonjudgmental attitude are irresistible. But I’m beyond tired or fatigued. I feel crushed, sinking, with pains in my joints and the sinews of my muscles. A team of sled dogs couldn’t drag me to my bed upstairs. So long, Oprah, I mutter, plunging into a coma, dead to the world…

…only to be rudely awakened hours later by a loud crack and the sound of a metal bowl spinning across the tile floor. I wander into the kitchen to investigate. My sister is standing on a kitchen stool, back toward me, head and hands deep inside a cabinet, muttering, swearing. I’m careful not to startle her since her balance is precarious. Dishes and glasses, canned goods and spices, boxes and jars clutter the counter.

“What are you doing?” I ask when her footing seems sturdy and she’s not likely to topple and break her neck.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Relining the cabinets.”

“Bingo. You were always the smart one.”

“It’s half past eleven.”

“So?”

She steps down from the stool, trying to hide the half-empty wine bottle on the counter.

“Have you had anything to eat?” I ask, trying to gauge the effect of two glasses of wine.

“Yeah, a piece of cheese.”

“You want me to call for take-out?”

“It’s too late,” she says.

“Want me to make something?”

“I just want to get this done. You can tell she’s been sick by the condition of these cabinets. I bet she hasn’t relined them in two years. She never used to let things get this bad.”

The crumpled, torn paper on the floor doesn’t look so bad to me. A few blemishes, a ring here and there, certainly not the grease-smeared, dust-coated mess you’d assume from my sister’s comments.

“Is that some type of criticism?” I ask.

She looks up, clearly perplexed.

“I mean, are you saying if I’d only paid a little more attention to the shelf paper I would have realized she was sick and could have gotten her to the doctor earlier, on time, before it was too late?”

“No. Of course not. No criticism intended. For God’s sake…” She reaches for the bottle and pours another glass of wine without offering any. “Why would you think that…What do you…Why do you hate me so much?”