The Last Burden

The engine of a Lexus came to a halt in its garage, though the driver did not hear it. He hadn’t heard anything for about forty minutes, actually. Not the warm purr of the engine start, not the squealing of the tires as he left his previous destination, and not the honks that followed him on the highway as he drifted between lanes, lucky to be alive and ticket-free. Outside his garage, the sun beamed through fluffy gray clouds that had begun to gather in the east, signalling a summer storm might soon break the pulverizing humidity that held their town in Southern New Hampshire hostage. He stared out of the window in his garage at the shreds of blue sky. He hadn’t felt anything for about an hour, but a tear leaked out of his eye at the sight of the haze from the clouds that got pulled apart like taffy. The sunlight undulated in intensity. Somewhere, a plane had left streaks of white fluff that had long since dissipated.

It had been twenty minutes of sitting in the car. He did not feel the time pass, but when he looked at his watch, his heart spiked with fear. Twenty whole minutes. Just like that. Never to return. In spite of the anxiety that pierced his every nerve, he had a hard time getting out of the car. He lowered the sun-shade and looked at his reflection in the tiny mirror. Steel hair that had receded modestly but left him with an imposing, imperial forehead that perfectly matched his strong nose and sharp jawline. His eyes were so dark they were almost black. They looked lost, unfocused. Like pits into a soul that had collapsed into itself like a massive star at the end of its life turning into a black hole. Red-rimmed and wet from tears that had cut canyons into haggard cheeks covered in stubble, his eyes quickly lost focus on themselves.

Finally, he exited his car. He took a briefcase with him and closed the garage, feeling the somber breeze stick to his skin as sweat formed instantly in a muggy prelude to the coming storm. Dirt and gravel crunched under his feet, puffing out under hard boots as he made the short walk to the front door of his house. The storm door had long-since been broken, but still it creaked unsteadily on its rusted hinges, whining at him to replace it.

As soon as he pushed open the main door, a cacophony of sound greeted him.

“Daddy!” cried three voices almost in unison. They had been watching his approach from the living room window to his left and turned the corner with blinding agility as they raced into his arms. Ages seven to eleven, his kids were swept into a tight hug, wordlessly.

How long it lasted, he did not know, but eventually Ally, his youngest daughter, said, “Daddy, let go!”

Let go? he thought, How… How do I do that?

With Ally’s exclamation, Ben and Sophia realized they too were finished with the embrace. Wriggling out of his arms, only slightly loosened to allow their escape, the three soon ran off to do whatever they were doing before he got home–likely watching the same television he’d soon wish to occupy: Jeopardy! was on soon.

From the kitchen appeared his wife, slender, aging so gracefully that every morning he was a few minutes late to work because he looked at her face and couldn’t bear to be parted from it in all of its beauty. Small creases formed at the edges of her mouth resembling dimples. Her eyes had fine lines from smiling, her eyebrows slightly knitted together as she saw the alien look on her husband’s face that her kids had missed.

“James?” she asked tentatively. “What’s wrong?”

He could not answer her at first. Seeing those soft hazel eyes, the cascade of chocolate brown hair which he kept insisting she didn’t need to dye because he liked the nobility bestowed upon her by the grays that peeked through it, and feeling the warmth of her lips on his own, he wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to get lost in those eyes as he so often did and in their hypnotic trance, he wanted to tell her everything that had happened in the last three months.

Then his kids’ voice rang out from the living room, and Chloe said, “Ben! Stop bothering your sister!”

In that moment, the sentence so often repeated in his house brought James new clarity. He could not tell her. He could not spoil the joy that twinkled in her eyes when she thought of her children, nor the excitement that moved across her body in the form of a little dance when she ate food she enjoyed.

Was it the right decision? Surely, Chloe deserved to know. James knew that. He knew that he knew that. Yet was it not better for her to live in this fantasy than to come down to the reality that was holding his mind in a vice grip?

He was dying. Cancer. Metastatic. Perhaps treatable if it had been caught early enough, yet James had chalked up all of the symptoms to a bad cough, perhaps pneumonia that would go away on its own, like his grandmother used to say such things would–maybe a little ginger tea, that’d do it.

James knew the truth. His family needed him as he was. He needed to provide for them. They deserved to be left with everything, and he with only that singular word with which he answered his wife’s question: “Nothing.”

He painted a smile on his face, and though she might not have believed its sincerity, a timer going off in the kitchen pulled her out of his arms, arms that remained outstretched even after she had turned her back. The smile faded instantly.

Did his family not also have some right to know the truth? Would it not be more painful for him to leave suddenly? Maybe. Maybe he was too much of a coward to admit that this part of his mind seemed more morally sound than the other; his family needed to know what was really going on. They deserved the right to be there for him. He imagined how angry Chloe would be that he had kept this from her.

Grimly, the thought surfaced: She wouldn’t have much time to be angry with him.

The prognosis from the doctor’s soft, melancholic voice rang in his ears. “Three months… maybe four.”

Eventually he’d have to go into hospice care at least, right? Any of the treatments the doctor had talked about would likely cause his family to go into crippling debt. The insurance at his construction job was not enough to cover it, he’d already checked. Hospice care… That seemed like a problem for later.

For now, he entered the chaos of the sunroom. Toys scattered everywhere and his kids were all playing with each other, crying out, laughing, chasing each other around. Three diamonds rushing around the room amidst a world as dark and ashen as coal. The sun was gone now, a blanket of ever-thickening clouds sent light filtered through their steel wool through his tall windows. Rich, they were not, yet watching his kids playing here in this room, seeing the way the tall trees swayed gently in the breeze from within an air-conditioned house, James realized he was far wealthier than he could have imagined.

He had not even registered the aroma rising from the kitchen, and though he desperately longed to put his arms around his wife again, to sink his chin into her shoulder and bite the fabric on the back of her shirt to stay the tears that seemed ready to burst once more through his cryptic eyes, he knew he ought to go to the bedrooms first.

In the smallest bedroom there lay a body. Breathing slightly under the heavy covers in a nearly pitch-black room there lay his mother. Often she lamented the strength of the air-conditioning. Often she spoke about how he could improve his lot in life if he just had the courage to switch jobs. How grating her voice had sometimes been to his ears, dispensing endless advice and rarely, if ever, recognizing the crucible he had been through to attain even this position in life. How often had he silenced her with a look of furious wrath… Now, he wished only to awaken her to hear that voice again, perhaps to feel the comfort of her embrace, to feel her kiss on his forehead. Something that would perhaps send him back into a childhood he could now only remember as idyllic, though tears had often stained his face then, too.

He knelt by her bed, watching her shift slightly in her sleep. She was not a well woman. During the darkest periods of his care for her, when he had been awoken in the middle of the night for an emergency, often even a false emergency, the terrible thought had crossed his mind: Wouldn’t it be better if she passed through this suffering soon? He disguised it in the moment by a noble justification: her suffering was needless and excessive, surely death was a better outcome. Now, he faced the truth. He fantasized about vacations alone with his wife where he didn’t have to worry about his mother at home. He longed for a day in which he could live his life again.

Now, James knew she would outlive him.

He kissed the covers over her hand and whispered, “Momma… I’m dying. I’ll be dead in a few months. Cancer, metastatic. Nothing’s going to cure it. I-I finally went to the doctor like you told me to do. Remember how you used to hold my hand when I got shots as a kid? I’d whine, and whine, and sometimes I used to lash out at the doctor and you said, ‘James! Sit still or you won’t get any ice cream!’ That used to be the reward, momma, you remember? A fruit popsicle from the store.”

His voice turned into a high-pitched whine as he added through tears, “Make me better, momma… please?”

James’ mother did not awaken. She did not stir. Were it not for the changes in her breathing, he might have assumed his words had killed her. He knelt there for a period of time unknown to him, weeping silently into the covers. At some point he quietly squealed, “Why can’t I be better, momma? I-I don’t wanna die…”

The darkness of the room pressed into him, pushing him down further. He felt like Atlas holding up its stifling weight on his back. This was his weight to carry. He knew his mother would not remember a single thing he’d told her when she was this deep in sleep. This was his burden, his lot in life. As a man, he knew he’d carry it on his own shoulders until the very second it became wholly unbearable, and even then…

A call came from the kitchen, “James! Dinner’s ready!”

He rose heavily to his feet, wiping his face and taking a deep breath. 186 nights. That’s the most time he had left on earth, according to an esteemed doctor. He could not keep the countdown out of his mind.

The dining table was set, his kids swatting at each other and being hastily calmed by Chloe, who took out big spoons of green bean casserole to go with their chicken. James’ place was already set, a deep amber glass of beer sitting on the coaster.

His wife met his questioning gaze and said, “You looked a little down, honey.”

He smiled and took her in his arms again, using all of the strength he held in reserve to keep from crying again. He whispered. “Thank you.”

When they took their seats, Chloe asked him, “Did you get a chance to call the gutter-guy? Looks like it’s gonna rain again and I don’t want another flood in the basement.”

“Ah, I’m sorry,” answered James quietly. “I-I didn’t. I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.”

“Mm,” said Chloe, cutting up her chicken. With pursed lips, she met his gaze and asked again, “Is everything okay?”

James looked at her, at his kids, and felt his heart beat rapidly, almost like it knew it wouldn’t get the eighty years allotted to it and was trying to squeeze out all the beats at once. He quelled it momentarily by taking a long draught of beer. He then met her gaze and said evenly, “Yeah… everything’s fine, I’m sorry.”

Though his laugh would not seem natural, though his smile seemed a little fractured, James swore to himself that he would not burden his family with this most terrible problem, with his fatal disease. This cross would be his own for another 185 nights, at most.