Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [128]
Yet Gary’s artistic gift never really seemed to mean that much to him. Why did he prefer a life in crime over a life in art? I can’t say, but I’ve wondered about it more times than I care to remember.
One afternoon, when it was just Gary and me sitting around the house, I tried to get him to show me some basics about drawing. He was drinking cough syrup that day, and he laughed in a polite but firm way that announced: No dice. I tried cracking Gary’s indifference, telling him I thought he could be a notable and successful artist if he wanted to. He chased his cough syrup with a swig of beer, then looked at me and smiled. “You want to learn how to be an artist?” he said. “Then learn how to eat pussy. That’s the only art you’ll ever need to learn.”
SOMEHOW, DESPITE ALL THESE SIGNS, we managed to have a nice Christmas at the end of 1961. My father went all out that year, outfitting the house and yard in beautiful lights from top to bottom, and my mother decorated the prettiest tree I had ever seen. Blue ornaments and blue bulbs.
My parents bought everybody nice presents—both Gary and Gaylen, I believe, received cars—and for once, we had a peaceful holiday dinner. My father and Gary were good to each other this day. I remember Gary telling my father: “I appreciate the things you’ve done for me. It’s nice to be back home.” My father said: “You know I love you, son. I want good things for you, and I’m here to help you.” The day ended with my mother playing her new upright piano, which she had pushed up against a wall in the dining room. The whole family sat around her as her talented fingers played carol after carol, all of us singing along. Six horrible voices, filling the year’s most holy night with our discordant harmonies. It was the first time we had ever done anything like that.
It was also the last. Neither my father nor Gary would ever spend Christmas with the family again.
MY MOTHER USED TO COME VISIT my father and me during our stay in Seattle, and she began staying for longer periods of time. In the first few months of 1962, that was the only way she would get to see us.
That’s because, during this time, my father began to feel unusually tired and sick. One day he found a lump on his neck, the size of a half dollar. He took me with him when he went to the doctor’s office. The doctor told my father that he couldn’t make an immediate diagnosis of the problem and that my father would have to enter the hospital to have the lump removed and tested. My mother came up to be with my father for this process, and to look after me while he was laid up in the hospital.
The day after the surgery, my mother and I took the bus to Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. It was an overcast spring day on Puget Sound—one of those days when an ocean breeze covers the city, like the smell of an oldness that can’t be lost. When we entered my father’s room, he was sitting up in bed. He was dressed in a bluish-white smock, and he was looking frailer than I had ever seen him, but he seemed happy to see us. He told my mother that he thought the surgery had been a success, that he was already feeling better. He expected to be back to work in a matter of days. The doctor—a tall, husky German man—came in to see how my father was doing and then asked if he could see my mother in his office.
He took my mother across the