Joseph Caldwell: Lazarus Rising

Dempsey had forgotten Johnny’s habit of opening his mouth slightly whenever he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. Johnny saw that her hair was shorter and that her uncovered left ear was still the most delicate and tender formation of flesh ever created. They exchanged greetings. Dempsey told Johnny she was on her way to Winnie’s. Johnny told her he was headed for the Staten Island ferry. When he asked about her painting, she said the expected thing, that it was going well, then mentioned the series of Lazarus paintings she had wanted to do as a memorial to her friend Jamey, who had died. Jamey was to have been the model. Johnny, after closing then parting his lips, offered to be the model. Dempsey told him she had AIDS. Unblinking, Johnny again closed his lips, parted them, once, twice, and lifted his chin ever so slightly. He repeated the offer. She accepted it warily.

At first their relationship pretended to be determinedly professional. Then, while painting Lazarus Afflicted , with his sisters Martha and Mary, Dempsey had a case of the sweats. Usually the sweats came at night, but this was mid-morning. She tried to ignore them, even though huge drops were falling on the shirt she was wearing. Johnny suggested a break. She refused. Then she fainted. When she came to, Johnny was brushing the hair from her forehead. Her teeth began to chatter and she could feel that the sweat had soaked through the shirt, with large wet splotches sticking to her back. She sat up and pulled her knees against her stomach. Her whole body was shaking. Johnny put a blanket across her shoulders and drew it around her, doubling it in front and making sure it covered her feet. He tucked it more tightly at the neck, then drew his hand away.

“I’m going to call the doctor,” he said.

“No. Not necessary. It’ll pass. I just have to—I have to try not to—not to rattle myself to pieces.”

“Then you’d better go lie down.”

“Let me stop shaking first. I will in a little—a little while.”

After checking the front fold of the blanket, Johnny stayed where he was, on one knee, watching her. He placed one arm behind her, beneath her shoulders, and put his other arm across so he could pull her gently toward himself. She let herself be held against him. And so, again, they became lovers.

In St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the annual firefighters’ mass, Johnny occupied himself before the celebration by following the narrative in the stained-glass windows of the north transept, high above the massive doors that led out to Fifty-First Street. He’d already looked at the Adoration of the Magi, the central panel, and had decided to go back to the beginning, starting with the Angel’s Annunciation in the lower left-hand corner. Now Johnny was looking at St. Joseph, asleep and dreaming, while yet another angel explained to him that his pregnant bride had conceived of the Holy Spirit, which meant that there was really nothing for him to worry about. St. Joseph’s robe seemed made of poured maple syrup; the angel clothed in the spun colors of a key-lime pie. (Johnny had not yet had breakfast.) It pleased him that what was a somewhat complicated situation in the relationship between Joseph and his wife Mary was being clarified at last. God was making the man privy to his inscrutable ways and now his married life could proceed as planned. Johnny liked the idea that God had the history, if not the habit, of making disclosures that could calm and console. There was an explanation for everything and God proved to be quite capable of dispensing insights when it suited his purposes. There was comfort in this truth, but before it could invade his spirit, the fireman in front of him slid back up onto his pew, hitting the joined knuckles Johnny had folded in an attitude of prayer.

Because this was a lieutenant and Johnny was only a regular firefighter, he, too, slid up onto his seat, taking into his spine the knuckled fist of the man behind him. The knuckles immediately withdrew and the shuffle of shoes, the swish of cloth indicated that the chain reaction set in motion by the lieutenant was now progressing behind him, probably getting the firefighters off their knees in a straight line that reached to the back of the cathedral.

It was time for Johnny to sit down anyway. He hadn’t been praying. He had made no real effort to concentrate, to collect himself and his thoughts and direct them toward the divine presence into whose company he’d come. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be there, even though he’d planned to attend and had prepared for it, rehearsed the role he’d decided to play: he would, in his wrath, confront the cardinal in his very own cathedral. The day before, his parish priest on Staten Island had told him he could not allow Dempsey and him to marry. When making love, Johnny had to use a condom. If he didn’t, he’d get AIDS. But the condom meant that his sperm could not go calling on Dempsey’s ova. The consummating marriage act would be thwarted, the marriage itself invalid. It could not, therefore, be allowed in the first place.

At communion time, Johnny would make known his anger, in person, to the cardinal—not because he expected a revision of canon law, but because he wanted His Eminence to be duly shamed by the injustice of hierarchical rigidities and made aware that the whole issue of condoms in the AIDS epidemic was not limited to gays but affected straights as well, and decorated ones at that, firefighters of known valor like John Francis Donegan who surely deserved better from the Church to which he had given allegiance all the days of his life. He was that mad. But he had an even greater concern than confronting the Cardinal: Dempsey’s need for him at home, at this very hour, this very minute. Here he was, indulging himself in some petulant exercise, while Dempsey might still be wincing in pain with no one there to help her.

Just as he had been about to leave the loft for the cathedral, Dempsey had been gripped by a severe case of cramps. It had seized not only her stomach, but her legs, mostly her calves. Ordinarily she would have given no indication of the pain she was suffering, but it was difficult for her to deny that she was bent forward in her walk and that she had to grimace between words. The repeated wincing finally forced her to admit she was having some difficulty. After a sudden spasm had pulled her upward on her way to the kitchen sink, she sat down, leaned over and began to rub the calf of her right leg.

“Here, let me,” Johnny had said. He squatted down in front of her and placed his hand on the back of her leg. “Slow or fast?”

“Try medium. Medium fast.”

Johnny cupped her heel in the palm of his left hand and began rubbing with his right. “The other one too?” He asked.

“This one first,” Dempsey whispered. She leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. Johnny raised her leg so that her ankle fit into his shoulder bone. With both hands he rubbed the leg, applying as much pressure as he could without slowing the movement of his hands. “Better?”

“Not yet.”

“Tell me when to do the other one.”

“Yeah. I will.”

His wrists began to tire, to cramp up, but still he kept rubbing, trying to take the effort into his upper arms, where he had strength without end. To give his right hand a rest, he pretended he had to brush the hair out of his eyes. To relieve his left, he wiped his forefinger under his nose. Then he found the proper angle. The pain in his wrists ceased and he could feel his biceps take over the task. Firmly, gently, he rubbed his palms along the knotted flesh, from just above the ankle to just below the knee, moving up, then down, to accommodate the swell of the calf.

“You can stop if you want to.”

“I’m all right.”