Jim Greene is Going to Die

She sat. He stared, blank eyed, wide-eyed, starry eyed, sad eyed… aren’t they all the same? Does a difference in emotion really change the appearance of the sensory organ that allows us to see and perceive optically, what we experience with our other senses in the world around us? Can a blind man have starry eyes? Does his inability to see affect the supposed emotion that transmits across or through his eyes?

         She stared. He sat. He reclined, a little even. The day was growing longer with the anticipation, hedging down second after second, accumulating a vast amount of seconds, minutes, days of hours even, as they waited. Could not another moment pass before action ensued? No. Action came now, interrupting their symphony of silence, breaking into the world that had constructed itself, had evolved from their inaction, from their anticipation. Sound, like an avalanche, erupted upon them, and their silence was dead, at last, yet too soon.

         “You may come in now, Mr. Greene.” The voice of a young doctor with sad, if it is possible, eyes, ushered in the two who were now one.

         Moments more of silence, a symphony again, that washed over them like a wave of inexplicable proportions crashing downward followed what the young doctor said next.

         “Your tests were positive Mr. Greene.”

         

         “Chemotheraphy is spelled funny.” The next two months were defined by that sentence; though Mark had no idea he would be defining the next two months with what he said next, and if he had, he perhaps would have picked a more profound or inspiring turn of phrase. But six year olds rarely consider such implications when they choose their sentences; in fact, they rarely choose sentences at all, they simply occur at the precise moment of conception.

         “You know a lot about spelling, Mark?” Mr. Greene asked his son. His serene acceptance disturbed Sarah Greene, his wife of five years.

         “I can spell my name.”

         “Let’s hear it.”

         “M-A-R-C-K.”

         “Good.”

         Jim Greene sat. Marck Greene stared. Sarah Greene stood in the corner, conducting her symphony with eyes closed and palms raised, like the deaf Beethoven she revered. Her bow was in her hand, her violin on the sofa. Music erupted from it when she felt things passionately, and the loss of a husband is a passionate ordeal.

         Two weeks had passed now. Jim felt his buttonholes, slipping each button in until his shirt was recognizable and no longer resembling two pieces of fabric hanging over his arms. If there were any four words Jim hated, which was rare as Jim loved words both colorful and profound, they would have been “Let me get that,” and if there were any words Sarah had said more often than “Let,” “me,” “get,” and “that,” you would have been hard pressed to find them slip through her teeth.

         On this morning, as Jim fixed seven buttons into seven buttonholes, Sarah brushing her hair behind him, and Asterisk sleeping soundly on his large, overstuffed dog bed, (Mark, or Marck, as now was arranged, sleeping soundly in his red racecar bed), Jim found it hard to ignore the cloud of concern and desperation that hovered inches if not less over Sarah’s currently being-brushed auburn hair. He reached for the razor, a few feet away.

         “Let me get––”

         “Get what, Sarah? The razor? What are you going to do, shave my face?”

         “I was just trying to…”

         “Help? By reminding me every moment that my ‘every moments’ are coming to an abrupt end? By belittling my existence and ending any conversation that has to do with anything substantial because it’s too hard? By… by…”

         “By caring? By loving? By… by…”

         “I’m not dead yet.”

         Sarah bit her lip. They didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

         Jim continued working, attending meetings and delivering power point lectures at conferences, pouring coffee and driving Marck to school, walking the dog, shopping for milk, watering the plants… Jim marveled at the mediocrity of his existence. Just recently it had all seemed like living a dream, perfect in every miniscule way. Now that he was being forced to observe his life as a passing thought in the grand scheme of things, he saw how insignificant a man he was: how pointless his life has been. A tiny blurb that lightly punctuated the flow of human history. How do you top yourself when you’ve done nothing significant in thirty-five years of life?

         Regardless, Jim Greene continued to work his mundane, semi-pointless nine to five job. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait to die like Sarah. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t.

         Sarah Greene was nervous. Constantly, nervous. She fidgeted as she picked up drug prescriptions from the pharmacy or melons from the grocery store. She shook as she drove from point A to point B. She didn’t even read her books for book club, a book club that she herself had instituted. But she continued to bite her lip in her husband’s presence. Some unexplained tension had developed between them; she couldn’t fathom what had caused it. Her husband seemed to be dying with every good grace, and she could do nothing but watch, horrified, as he slowly sank out of existence.

         Sarah felt like led had been injected directly in her heart as she pushed a wire frame shopping cart down the slick, clinically white linoleum of the superstore aisles. A hitch in the wheel made it squeak on every third rotation of the back left wheel. Squeakit, Squeakit. She deliberated between two brands of fabric softener.

         “Sarah!” a chalky voice enthused. Sarah grimaced at the box of fabric softener, her grip tightening ever so slightly. She fixed a smile on her face before turning.

         “Joyce!” she reciprocated the enthusiasm flawlessly.

         “You look wonderful, Sar,” Joyce, a middle-aged woman with mousy blonde hair trapped rigidly in a hair-claw and a tight, cashmere, toffee-colored sweater hung shapelessly to her near-shapeless body. Her cheekbones were high and the skin clung to them artificially. “But how are you, dear?” she continued, with an intensely rehearsed air of concern and urgency.

         “I’m fine,” Sarah returned with the same air of studied performance. She abhorred Joyce and dismal conversation did nothing to help the kinship.

         “How are things… at home?” Joyce pursued intently. Sarah pictured herself swinging the box of fabric softener into Joyce’s perfectly sculpted features. It wouldn’t be the first time Joyce would have to go under the knife.

         “As good as can be expected,” Sarah replied courteously, a coy smile barely hinting at her near-murderous intents.

         “And Jim?” Joyce would not relent. Sarah practically laughed; as if all of Joyce’s previous inquiries had not been in regards to Jim. Even now, a forced sense of level-headedness condemned Sarah to reply that all was well. Her stomach clenched as she realized what she had been doing to her husband. Her eyes clouded for a moment as she recollected all the things she had said, all the condescending comments, the level-headed responses, the attempts at distraction in the form of baseball games and a trip to the beach…

         “My husband has cancer, Joyce. How the hell do you think he is? He’s dying.” Sarah placed the fabric softener back down on the shelf and abandoned the speechless book-club attending, garden-party organizing, stiff collared WASP and half-filled shopping cart in aisle eleven.

         She practically dashed, breathless, into her home and halted at the entryway of the study. Jim Greene sat, a carefully blank face as he turned towards his wife. Though he didn’t show it, he was slightly anxious to hear what she might say. He could think of nothing that would imply he’d been regarding his own impending demise, nor of anything in which he could be assisted.

         “Jim,” she croaked, breathlessly, clutching at a stitch in her side.

         He almost laughed. He thought better of it. “What’s wrong?”

         “You’re dying,” she admitted, not able to meet his gaze.

         “Very true,” he replied, standing. It was with confusion that he continued. “You didn’t know this?”

         “Are you okay?” she asked, tears filling her eyes as she discussed the one thing in the world big and scary enough to give her nightmares.

         “I’m terrified,” he confessed straightly. “But I’m still here, right?” And she could ask no more of him.