“Yes.”
“Because you know about all the bogus ones out there, right? How do you know this guy isn’t gonna inject you with Cascade? Remember the lady in Queens who had that done to her last week?”
“I’m certain it won’t be Cascade. For one thing, this doctor has no dishes to wash.”
“Okay, then I’ll wait until you get your shots. And if you don’t drop dead on the spot, I’m definitely calling him. I am so excited! I’m gonna be twenty-seven forever! And I don’t have to go to São Paulo to do it!”
She sprung up and rushed to the kitchen, then froze halfway there.
“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Do you know what I just realized? I’m always gonna get my period. That sucks.”
“Seems like a minor sticking point.”
“We could be roommates forever too. Do you want to sign a hundred-year lease?”
“No.”
“Your loss, because I am gonna party my ass off until the year 5000!”
Then she poured a glass of Shiraz to the brim and danced on the sofa.
Date Modified: 6/13/2019, 10:02AM
“Cake-Batter Mixes Are One Of The Great Food Innovations Of The Past Sixty Years”
That’s the kind of thing you hear when you talk with my dad for any considerable length of time. I don’t want to say he goes off on tangents, because that would suggest he has a main topic from which to deviate. I enjoy his company because he never answers any question with the phrase “I don’t know.” He either knows, or he’ll talk out of his ass until he’s convinced you he knows. It’s a skill I’ve yet to master.
I’m due to get the cure finished off on Monday. I should be all excited at the prospect of beginning the rest of my indefinitely elongated life, but I’ve found myself increasingly impatient as I grow closer. All I’ve done the past few days is calculate population figures and think about death—mine or anyone else’s. I don’t enjoy thinking about death, which is one of the reasons I wanted the cure in the first place. Now, I seem to be obsessing over it. The irony of it all is infuriating.
All of this ruminating and provocation was beginning to feel like a vise on my head. I was getting sick of endlessly talking about it with myself. I needed an outlet. Someone besides Katy. Any time I bring up the cure with her, she screams out in ecstasy and packs a bowl. She’s got a fabulous attitude about the whole thing, but I needed to go a bit deeper. Besides, I was already visiting my dad for the weekend, and I would have burst like a grape if I didn’t fess up.
My dad has lived in northwest Connecticut for the past fifteen years, in one of those towns you can only get to on Metro North by switching trains at Bridgeport. Then you have to go all the way to Waterbury, at which point you feel as if you’ve been dumped off in a nuclear fallout zone. Towns around Waterbury are populated exclusively by elderly people and kids who took enough acid to permanently unmoor their brains. After more than five days in the vicinity, I have a hard time not wanting to tear off my own skin. Once you’re in that part of the state, there is nothing to do except eat and drink. And that’s how my old man has spent his retirement: eating and drinking.
He picked me up at the Waterbury station and drove me home. He had cold beer and a dish of mixed nuts waiting at the house for us. It was his way of entertaining the way my mom might have, way back when—of adding a nice little flourish to my arrival. I appreciated it greatly. Once we sat down, I couldn’t hold back.
“I’m getting the cure.”
“What?”
“I’m getting the cure. Final shots are on Monday.”
“So it’s real?”
“Far as I know.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
He sat there. He had an inscrutable look on his face. I couldn’t read him in the slightest.
“How did you get it?” he asked.
“I knew someone. It wasn’t that hard. Do you want it? The doctor said he wouldn’t give it to anyone over thirty-five, but I bet I could convince him otherwise, or find someone else to do it.”
“Won’t give it to anyone over thirty-five? Well, isn’t that a bitch? I suppose I’m a member of the ‘unluckiest generation’ now. That’s what they called it in the news report. ‘The last to die,’ they said. It’s like the people who died just as TV was being invented. That had to have been aggravating. You spend your whole life sitting next to some giant radio. And when they finally get around to adding picture to the sound, you’re dead as a doornail. Not really fair.”
“Like I said, I still think I can get it for you.”
“How much did it cost?”
“Seven thousand bucks.”
“I don’t know. Seems like a lot.”
“It’s eternal youth, Dad. It’s not gonna cost the same as a gumball.”
“No, you’re probably right about that. It’s just… I dunno. Look, I don’t mean to sadden you. Because I’m happy as can be that you found something that will keep you healthy forever and ever. I really am. It’s a comfort to me to know you’re not going to grow old and have crappy knees and hit a golf ball no more than eighty yards. But each day I’m down here is another day I’m away from your mother.”
We sat quietly for a moment. My mom died when I was fifteen years old, right after we moved from Buffalo. She died of cancer. For two years, she went through chemo and radiation. She aged forty years in a whisper. All her hair fell out. They kept going back to cut out parts of her again and again. And she stayed alive because she knew this was the only life she’d ever have. No reincarnation. No afterlife. Just this. That’s all you get. By the time the cancer had colonized every inch of her frame, she’d dropped to ninety pounds and looked like a mummy preserved in oil. Just a skeleton with a tarp of skin stretched out over it. There was nothing about her dying that was good.
“You really think you’ll see her again?” I asked him.
“Oh, I have no doubt of that.”
“But she’ll always be there. Why spend the next few years just sitting here waiting? Why not do something with the time you have?”
“I do plenty!”
He gestured to his railroad timetables. My dad collects them in bulk. Five times a year he’ll drive to some random state and attend a timetable convention. He’s the only person at those things who isn’t dressed in overalls and a Fruit of the Loom T-shirt.
“I’m just saying that there may be places and people that you still have to discover. You may find a new passion, like antique boats or something.”
“Antique boats? Why would I like antique boats? I’ve met those boating guys. They’re all completely cheesy.”
“It’s just an example, Dad. It could be anything. I just don’t think there’s any need for you to sit here, waiting for the end.”
He grew angry at that remark. “I’m not waiting for the end, John. I’m not in a rest home. I have a life, one I’m glad to have. I’m not some sad old thing you have to come check on occasionally like a houseplant. But I have a date with your mom somewhere down the line, and I don’t want to postpone it longer than I have to. I don’t judge your choice to loiter around this planet forever, like a skateboarder outside a movie theater. So I would hope you would refrain from judging mine.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t