Chapter Thirty-Six
-- November, 1984
Elton John – “Funeral for a Friend”
To supplement the meager allowance she got from her trust, Sandra took a part-time job at an alterations store, knitting baby bonnets and sewing patches onto elbows. Since his business had been unceremoniously taken from him, William hadn’t worked. He seemed only too happy to let his wife be the sole breadwinner for the both of them. He spent his days fantasizing about Vanna White and playing golf.
Sandra was restocking when she got the call. Her supervisor waved her over. Before handing her the receiver, she warned Sandra to stop giving their phone number out, that this was a place of business. Sandra waited until she was alone before getting the news: her husband had fainted on the ninth hole at Dunwoodie. But it wasn’t serious. The rest of his foursome even teased him as he was loaded into an ambulance.
Since he was near the city, the medics took him to St. Vincent’s, where the Nurses poked and the Doctors prodded until they were reasonably sure it was nothing. Still, a last-minute, precautionary CAT-scan seemed to point to some kind of cancer.
They referred him to Sloan-Kettering.
One-by-one, Sandra called her children. Her daughters said they would come at once, but Nick would have to be issued a day-pass from rehab. Bill was driving in from out-of-state so he was the one given the task of picking his little brother up.
When Bill got to Seabrook, he looked around for a parking spot but realized that wouldn’t be necessary. Nick was streaking across the front lawn, clothes in hand, clearly in the middle of an escape attempt. When he saw his brother, his face lit up. He turned heel and sprinted towards Bill’s idling car. As Nick dove into the backseat, Bill screamed, “what the hell? Why are you naked?!”
“They denied the day pass! Drive!”
Bill saw several male orderlies running their way and stepped on the gas. His Chrysler squealed away down the pavement.
**
Lynn was the first to arrive at her father’s hospital room. She found him in good spirits, sitting up in bed and reading the paper.
“I just don’t understand. How did this happen, daddy?” she asked.
“Too much living, baby.” He was tangled up in his bedsheets. He tried to adjust, but it only led to terrible pain.
“Don’t ever get old,” he said, grimacing. “It’s overrated.”
Janet showed up shortly after. She entered noisily, a bundle in her arms. “Look who I brought,” she said holding her newborn up so her father could see. Despite the pain, William’s face danced with joy when he saw his first grandson.
“Do you want to hold him?” Janet asked.
William blanched. “No-no, I don’t want to drop him. I dropped Lynn’s wedding pictures into the sink--”
“You won’t. It’ll be okay. I’ll be right here.” She laid Taylor in his fragile arms. William swallowed hard. He put his forehead to the baby’s crown.
“What do you think, dad?”
William smiled. “He’s grabbing my finger...”
“I know. He’s a keeper.” Janet said, proudly.
William looked up from the child. “I need you to do me a favor, darling.”
Janet leaned over him. “Anything, dad.”
“Get married.”
Janet dropped her head and groaned. “I’m not gonna settle down just to get it over with.”
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William sighed, hard. “You must think you have all the time in the world...” He turned to his wife to ask, “where are the boys?”
“They’re on their way,” Sandra said.
William nodded. He told them he was tired, that he needed some sleep.
His daughters collected their things. Lynn kissed her father on the cheek. Janet stooped to take her baby back from William. “You take care of yourself.” was all she said.
“I think it’s a little late for that.”
**
When the tumor in William’s liver refused to get smaller, the surgical staff said the best they could do was keep him pain free. But that wasn’t good enough for Sandra. The doctors countered that if her husband had heeded any of the warning signs, they might have been able to get in front of this thing and hammer it with chemo and radiation before it could spread to his lymph nodes.
In a hail mary, Janet heard of a specialist in D.C. that agreed to see her father on short notice. They rushed him into elective surgery, but the doctor could only remove 10% of the tumor. When William woke, he was in worse shape than ever and asked again for his kids.
Janet and Lynn could be counted on, but it took Bill hunting Nick’s old haunts to scare up his brother. He dragged Nick onto the next train out of Penn Station. They arrived in D.C. three hours later and ran to the nearby hospital, afraid that they had missed it all. They joined their sisters in their father’s hospital room. It was the first time in over a decade that they were all in the same room together.
William breathed with help from a pump, it’s constant intake and outtake providing a steady soundtrack to the room. His eyes were open, however dim. Janet pulled up a chair and sat holding his hand. She felt pressure to speak and filled the air with delusions of how he was going to get better soon. Finally, even that was too much for her and she began to cry.
“There’s so much more to say,” she sputtered. “I will miss you dad.”
Nick was twitching from something he had taken on the train. Watching his older sister lose it, he quietly walked up to Lynn and whispered in her ear. “Do me a favor? If I ever get that sick... put me out of my misery.”
Lynn stared at him, aghast. He left to grab a smoke, passing Bill who stood in the center of the room, arms crossed. William’s oldest kept shaking his head in small, minute ways as if trying to convince himself that none of this was actually happening. To see the old man like this, no longer able to breathe on his own...
He thought back to when he was younger. He couldn’t have been more than ten, Nicky no more than six. Their family was just finishing up dinner. As he did after every meal, William got his cigarettes out and began to smoke.
“Can I have one?” Bill asked.
Sandra looked to William concerned, but he signaled her that he was handling it. “Sure,” he said, fishing another one out.
Feeling left out, Nick chimed in. “Me too?”
Though William hadn’t expected this, he shrugged. “Sure, why not?! Let’s go outside. Enjoy ‘em on the porch...”
He led his boy’s outside and all three of them sat on the porch swing side by side. William moved to light all three of their cigarettes at once, but Bill interjected, “No, I want to light mine.”
“Yeah, me too!” Nick echoed.
“Okay...” William handed the lighter skeptically to Bill.
After several failed attempts at getting it going, Bill gave it back to his father. “You can light it.”
“Yeah, you can light it.” Nick repeated, happy to be involved.
William lit his son’s cigarettes and handed them out. Then he lit his own, watching as Bill breathed in more than he expected. Having been warned about coughing though, Bill ended up only groaning pathetically. Nick took his like a champ though. And the three of them sat there in the cool summer air, relaxing.
Five minutes later, William watched as both his sons puked over the side of the porch. He couldn’t help but smile.
That night, in their shared bedroom, he tucked his boys in. They were freshly showered and free of vomit, if still a little green. “It’ll go away in a while...” he told them.
Bill rubbed his temples. “I’m never doing that again. Why do you do it?”
“Because I’m an adult. Now get some sleep you two.” He walked to the door and was about to hit the light switch when--
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Nick?”
“I’m only gonna have one tomorrow night, okay? Make sure I only do one.”
Some twenty-five years later, a doctor pulled a sheet over William’s dead body. Janet looked over at her brother. Bill was broken, his lips peppered in blood, from biting them so hard.
“I don’t think I knew him at all...” he finally managed.
Janet had so rarely seen him cry during their childhood. She could have sworn that their father’s death would do it. But the tears never came. When she saw his face relax into a deep frown though, she knew her brother would never smile again.
At the funeral less than a week later, all of William’s children stood in the receiving line of people wishing to pay their respects. Cody was the first of their friends to pass the casket. He had a dark suit on that was only slightly undercut by the single funky earring he wore. He hugged Sandra for longer than she would have liked.
John Birch and his wife, Simone, were next. J.B. stepped up to the altar and approached the coffin. He placed a hand on William’s lifeless shoulder. “You win this round, old man.”
He and his wife moved on to the other Bensons. When Simone saw Bill, she threw her arms around him, weeping.
“Oh, Bill!” she wailed into his chest.
It was only then that Bill was able to cry.