Harry wasn’t eating anything. Maisie tried to feed her broth, but she couldn’t do it. I could see that Harry wasn’t going to take any more food, but Maisie wanted to keep her mom alive, keep her going. Harry said she couldn’t feel her feet anymore, so Maisie and I rubbed them, and while we rubbed them, Ethan sat down beside her and started in on the Fervid stories. There was this girl named Nobisa, who wasn’t very clean or very pretty. I liked that because usually, you know, it’s the beautiful princess and blah, blah, blah. Nobisa had adventures with some pretty strange types, an ogre named Burnt because he was once almost killed in a fire and was all scar tissue, and there was a fairy named Fat for the good reason that she was obese and it made flying hard for her. She was so weighted down, but she couldn’t get thin because she had a gigantic hunger for bacon and eggs. She ate her way through all the pigs in the kingdom and the chickens couldn’t lay enough eggs for her appetite, and a war started with the neighbor kingdom because of it. Ethan kept on telling, and Harry lay there with her eyes closed and her fingers holding the morphine drip control, but she smiled now and again.
Then Harry threw up slime with blood in it. She gagged, and I put my hand on her chest and breathed out to her. She moaned. Then she said, “You know, they chopped me up for no reason, Clemmy. They took me apart and poisoned me, but it just made it worse.” Bruno looked so upset. Tears spurted from his eyes.
Right at that moment a wiry man, with long hair and a beard, wearing a T-shirt with a skull on it, came skipping into the room — I mean skipping the way kids skip, step-hop, step-hop — and he started talking real loud and waving his arms like a windmill. To be honest, for a second I thought one of those crazy characters from Harry’s stories had come to life. He bowed down to us like a man who was going to play the piano for a whole hall full of people, and then he shook his fist at the ceiling. But he was winding himself up into a sermon. The words came out fast and furious. The way he talked reminded me of this inspirational preacher Grandma Lucy took me to once, but that guy had his hair all slicked down with grease, and he wore a navy blue suit. The wiry man talked about faith and zeal and tribulation and the blood of the cross and lambs and angels and storms and lightning crashing in the sky and September 11 and even the Internet, although I wasn’t sure how that fit into it. I kept trying to read his aura, but he was hopping around the room on his bowed legs, all jerky and nervous, and it was hard to tell what he was sending off. Harry was moaning, and Bruno looked very angry, and I thought he was going to hit the little man.
Suddenly, the preaching man turned quiet. He said, “Break thou the arm of the evil and wicked man.” It’s from one of the Psalms. I learned most of them when I was younger. It’s not one of the comforting ones, though, not like lying down in green pastures. Then he hopped right over to Psalm 22, another scary passage: “I am poured out like water, / and all my bones are out of joint; / my heart is like wax; / it is melted in the midst of my bowels. / My strength is dried up like a potsherd; / and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; / and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.” I never knew what a potsherd was.
I still had my hands on Harry, and I was breathing in rhythm, and she breathed with me. She said, “I am like a broken vessel.” So Harry must have known her Bible too. I wouldn’t have supposed it, but later Ethan told me Harry had read so many books and of course she knew the Bible because it was “great literature.” He was a little snobby about it. Oh well.
We took her outside because Harry said she wanted to see the water and the sky. Pearl thought this might be too much. But Harry really wanted it, and Bruno said we were going to do it no matter what. His face was all red, and he said, “Goddamn it, if that’s what she wants, that’s what she’s getting.”
It was a big production. We took the IV with us because it rolled, but we had to get her into the wheelchair, which wasn’t easy because she was so tender everywhere; and she was so cold, we had to bundle her up in a big sweater and scarf and wrap two blankets around her. Maisie found a nice green hat with a brim for her head, even though it was spring and the air was warm. Harry looked pretty funny, I have to say. When she was all ready to go out, it was awfully hard to find the person inside all the wrappings. It looked like we were wheeling out a long sleeping bag in a hat. We took her down in the building’s freight elevator. I hadn’t even noticed it before. Bruno said he was the one who had to steer the chair because he knew how to handle it, but he bumped Harry a couple of times anyway, and she would squawk “Ow” every time, but just for a second. Pearl came along with us, all calm and clear with her straight-up-and-down posture, very dignified, and the skinny man, too, who seemed tuckered out from his sermon, was walking with a limp all of a sudden. I wondered if he wasn’t feeling sympathy for Harry and it made him lame for a while.
Ethan whispered to me that the wiry person was the Barometer. His mother was killed by a tornado, and he had spent time, a lot of time, in mental hospitals, but he lived with Harry and Bruno now. We wheeled Harry down by the water so she could take a look at it. I think she wanted to feel the sun on her face, because she lifted it up to the sky. Kali was prancing on the leash and pulling me here and there to get in the smells. How she loves her smells.
I pulled Kali back from the others and walked a few yards away. I thought they should have Harry to themselves — Bruno and Maisie and Ethan should, anyway. I watched the gulls and looked over at Lady Liberty. I thought about what Harry must be feeling because she wouldn’t see her again, not like this, anyway. I wanted her to know it would be better, more beautiful on the other side, but it was sad because we can’t help loving what’s around us even if it is grasping and attachment to the things that don’t really matter when you take a higher spiritual perspective. The trip didn’t last long. Harry couldn’t take it. Her hat fell into her face, and Maisie had to straighten it out because Harry was too feeble to do it. She fixed her mom’s scarf, too, and I heard Harry whisper, “I’m the baby now.” And Maisie smiled, but when she walked along beside Bruno and Harry couldn’t see, Maisie’s face was wet as wet could be with all the tears.
Aven, Harry’s granddaughter, arrived after her school was over. She was a tall kid for her age, with short hair, big eyes, and a serious face. She looked like a tomboy. Ethan said, “She hates pink. Won’t wear it.” He said she was a math whiz, too: “Calculates like that.” He snapped his fingers. I think she knew she was going to say goodbye to Harry. She called her Grandmother. I kind of wish she could have seen Harry a little earlier in the day, because Harry was so exhausted from the trip down to the water that she couldn’t really say much. Maisie brought Aven up to Harry, and Aven looked at her grandmother’s white wrinkled skin with a big vein standing out in her temple and at her eyes, which were all caved in, and at her flaky chapped lips, and she was afraid. She held back, didn’t want to touch her grandma. Maisie gave her a little punch in her back to push her toward Harry, and I could see Aven’s face crumple up, and she sucked her lips into her mouth. She was only eight years old. Maybe nine. I knew Aven was about to burst out crying, so I picked up Kali and brought her over to the two of them. Kali whimpered a little, and she sniffed Harry. Kali knew. My little dog knew just what was going on. So I took Aven’s hand in mine, and we petted Kali together, and then I put our hands on Harry’s shoulder very gently, and we petted Harry together for a while, but I kept my other arm around Aven’s shoulder. Then I felt Maisie’s hand on my back. That was nice. Maisie thought it was okay. Harry’s eyes were teary, and I thought she was going to start bawling with her granddaughter standing there in front of her; but she looked at Aven, and her bleary eyes didn’t look so bleary for a second, and she made a noise in her throat and then, as loudly as she could, which wasn’t very loud, she croaked out, “Fight for yourself. Don’t let anybody push you around. You hear me?”