Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty [111]
The antibiotic’s one drug that actually does what’s hoped, controlling things so that a bout of diarrhea or two a day is all we deal with. Wally certainly isn’t wasting; we all notice he’s harder to move, but it’s hard to say how much of that is his weight, how much the increasing deadness of his legs and thighs. It begins to feel to me that his center of gravity, the lower back, the pelvis, is increasingly inert.
But he’s a round-faced little Buddha—radiant, newly short-haired since our friend Glen’s come over and cut his hair, setting up a temporary salon in the kitchen with all his hairdresser equipment, a ritual tonsure. And there’s something very Siddhartha-like about his sweet acceptance, too, the way he’s here breathing in the present, smiling on this green raft of a bed with his companion dog and cat floating with him. One of our cats, Portia, spends nearly all her life in a trance, dreaming in a corner somewhere, but Thisbe, the lithe, owl-faced tortoiseshell cat we’ve had ever since we first moved to Vermont, seems never to leave Wally’s side now; she’s always curled on the pillow or down near his feet. The world may be flood and unpredictability, a dangerous rush toward heaven only knows what, but the bed’s a safe vessel, the three of them stretched out or curled, sleeping or blinking in the sunlight. Lynda calls and asks, “How’s the Buddha?”
Rena comes once a week to sit beside or in the bed and listen and talk. Their sessions seem intimate, domestic. I go out and ride my bike or run errands while she’s there, but sometimes I come back early and there are Wally and Rena, each with one hand stroking Arden or Thisbe, the four of them serene in the conversation’s deep, quiet round.
October: Hard to think this little book is the journal of nearly two years—so much darkness and sorrow, joy, too. But not today—today I watched Darren wheeling W backwards to go to the doctor, they were backing toward the gate, W’s face growing smaller…Not a good day today, so tired, though the last couple of days have been really fine ones, and Monday we had an amazingly clear, energetic talk, like a conversation we might have had a year ago.
Wally craves Hot Tamales, a cinnamon candy which comes in a cardboard box decorated with cacti and serapes. I buy them at the A&P, in those big boxes candy comes in at the movies, half a dozen boxes at a time. He gets on a roll, eating them one after another, and then slows down to savor one at a time.
Then he remembers bubble gum. We buy it by the box, and he keeps adding a fresh piece to what he’s already chewing, until it all seems too much work to chew and I have to ask him if he’d like to stop—he looks weary, chewing so much gum.
Then he gets a hankering for licorice, the English kind, multicolored, striped, fancy little pieces of candy which resemble tiny pillbox hats or art deco buildings, little Guggenheim museums or Miami Beach hotels. They’re beautiful. I find them and Hot Tamales in the sheets, down in the crack between the bed frame and the mattress, under the white metal drawers by Wally’s bed, the nightstand that’s become a repository of equipment: thermometer, bedpan, toilet paper, wipes, urinal, moisturizer, drugs, Chinese herbs, remote control.
The Chinese herbs come from our acupuncturist, Samantha. We’re trying acupuncture at the suggestion of our friend Billy, who feels he’s really been helped, that his energy level and overall health have improved.
Samantha comes to the house once a week, and treats us both: tiny stainless needles to boost Wally’s immune system, calm his spirit, and clear his head. I get my spirit-calming points, at the very top of the ears, done too, as well as other points to boost my energy level and strengthen my lower back. I’ve started taking an herbal formula, too, for energy and strength, since I’ve been feeling twinges, the muscles near the base of my spine starting to ache and complain.
Acupuncture always makes me feel terrifically relaxed; a twenty-minute session is like an hour’s nap. Wally claims it does nothing