49
ROBINSON’S PARENTS WELCOMED me like a family member—and they said nothing about me spending the night in their son’s room. Joe, who was a history buff, told me all about the Asheville tuberculosis sanitariums the next morning. (Even F. Scott Fitzgerald, my ninth-grade literary crush, had spent time in one.) Jonathan walked me around the car he was working on, explaining various things about its engine that I didn’t understand and promising to take me for a ride as soon as he got new tires. Lou bought tempeh bacon when Robinson mentioned I didn’t eat meat, and one afternoon she braided my hair.
“I always wanted a daughter,” she said wistfully. “Those boys and their cars. I love them to the moon, but it’s horsepower this and carburetor that, and I always thought to myself, Who’s going to help me prune the roses?”
“I don’t have much experience with gardening,” I admitted. Dad and I had had a spider plant in our apartment, but it was probably all dried up by then.
“You’d like it,” Lou said. “You’re a careful person, I can see that.”
Used to be, anyway, I thought.
“It’s like the Little Prince says,” she went on. “‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.’ You can’t tame a stock car, Axi. It’s not the same thing.”
I smiled. “I’ve quoted that book to your son.”
“Oscar—I mean Robinson, I guess—could never be persuaded to read it.”
And then we walked outside, into the soft summer air, and she showed me how to deadhead the roses so they’d bloom all the way until late fall. When we came back, we had armfuls of blossoms, enough to put in every room.
The point is, life with Robinson’s family would have been perfect if only Robinson hadn’t been getting sicker, minute by minute. It was as if being back home allowed him to finally stop pretending he was all right. And had there been any doubt about his prognosis—or any denial of what it meant—a visit from his childhood specialist had wiped that away.
“I recommend you call hospice,” the doctor had said. Meaning: all you can do now is keep him comfortable. Until.
Word spread quickly around town, and visitors began to arrive, bringing casseroles and cookies and boxes of Kleenex. There was a procession of friends, neighbors, classmates, and soccer coaches who had known and loved Robinson.
Robinson held court on the old sofa in the living room, pale and covered with blankets, even though the rest of us were in short sleeves and dabbing at our sweating upper lips. His spirits were high, though he tired easily. And though he was in pain, he rarely hit the button on his morphine IV—he said it made his head feel like a hot-air balloon.
Everyone had stories to tell, like the time Robinson won the Soap Box Derby race, then just kept going for another half-mile because he’d neglected to give his car a set of brakes. About how he’d “borrowed” the high school’s mascot costume to perform a gut-busting bump-and-grind during halftime at the homecoming game. One neighbor told me that Robinson mowed and raked her lawn for her but always refused payment, and a pimply twelve-year-old told me that when he was eight, Robinson had saved him from drowning in Beaver Lake.
It was as if I were seeing Robinson’s life flash before my eyes, in the words and stories of the people who loved him.
When he felt good enough, Robinson entertained his guests with tales of life “out West,” which he made sound way better than it actually was.
“If Klamath Falls has a boom in tourism, it’ll be because of you,” I told him one evening. “And they’ll all come home disappointed.”
“K-Falls has its charms,” he said.
“Oh yeah? Name one.”
“Her name is Axi Moore,” he said. “Sheesh, that was easy. Oh, and Wubba’s BBQ Express has that great pulled pork sandwich.”
See what I mean? Spirits high.
During the days, I passed around snacks and reheated bowls of pasta or soup in the microwave. Even though we in the house weren’t hungry, everyone else was. It was like a dinner party that never ended.
Lou moved through the house as if in a dream, or a nightmare. Joe looked pale and scared. Jonathan, on Robinson’s orders, hung a sign on the wall that said NO CRYING ALLOWED—not that anyone was capable of following that particular order. Even fat Leafy whined and barked, as if she had stories about Robinson, too.
“She used to be an agility champ,” Joe said once, shaking his head. “Can you believe it?”
“Now she’s an eating champ,” Jonathan added, tossing her a cracker.
I bent down and rubbed Leafy’s feathery ears, and she responded with a warm lick of my hand. I had a sudden pang of longing for my old dog. Or maybe it was a longing for the healthy, loving family I’d never really had. It was hard to tell.