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windshield and bumper of the green Firebird. A nd behind that, a door is opening.
“What,” asked the middle-aged woman a moment after I’d snapped the picture, “in God’s name—” and then she stopped talking.
“Ma’am,” A ugustus said, nodding toward her, “your daughter’s car has just been deservedly egged by a blind man. Please close the door
and go back inside or we’ll be forced to call the police.” A fter wavering for a moment, Monica’s mom closed the door and disappeared. Isaac threw the last three eggs in quick succession and Gus then guided him back toward the car. “See, Isaac, if you just take—we’re coming to the curb now—the feeling of legitimacy away from them, if you turn it around so they feel like they are committing a crime by watching—a few
more steps—their cars get egged, they’ll be confused and scared and worried and they’ll just return to their—you’ll find the door handle
directly in front of you—quietly desperate lives.” Gus hurried around the front of the car and installed himself in the shotgun seat. The doors closed, and I roared off, driving for several hundred feet before I realized I was headed down a dead-end street. I circled the cul-de-sac and raced back past Monica’s house.
I never took another picture of him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Afew days later, at Gus’s house, his parents and my parents and Gus and me all squeezed around the dining room table, eating stuffed peppers on a tablecloth that had, according to Gus’s dad, last seen use in the previous century.
My dad: “Emily, this risotto . . .”
My mom: “It’s just delicious.”
Gus’s mom: “Oh, thanks. I’d be happy to give you the recipe.”
Gus, swallowing a bite: “You know, the primary taste I’m getting is not-Oranjee.”
Me: “Good observation, Gus. This food, while delicious, does not taste like Oranjee.”
My mom: “Hazel.”
Gus: “It tastes like . . .”
Me: “Food.”
Gus: “Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately . . . ?”
Me: “It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several
luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down all around your canal-side di
Gus: “Nicely phrased.”
Gus’s father: “Our children are weird.”
My dad: “Nicely phrased.”
A week after our di
morning and visited him on the fourth floor. I hadn’t been to Memorial since visiting Isaac. It didn’t have any of the cloyingly bright primary color–painted walls or the framed paintings of dogs driving cars that one found at Children’s, but the absolute sterility of the place made me nostalgic for the happy-kid bullshit at Children’s. Memorial was so functional. It was a storage facility. A prematorium.
When the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor, I saw Gus’s mom pacing in the waiting room, talking on a cell phone. She hung up
quickly, then hugged me and offered to take my cart.
“I’m okay,” I said. “How’s Gus?”
“He had a tough night, Hazel,” she said. “His heart is working too hard. He needs to scale back on activity. Wheelchairs from here on out.
They’re putting him on some new medicine that should be better for the pain. His sisters just drove in.”
“Okay,” I said. “Can I see him?”
She put her arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. It felt weird. “You know we love you, Hazel, but right now we just need to be a
family. Gus agrees with that. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll tell him you visited.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m just go
She went down the hall, back to where he was. I understood, but I still missed him, still thought maybe I was missing my last chance to see him, to say good-bye or whatever. The waiting room was all brown carpet and brown overstuffed cloth chairs. I sat in a love seat for a while, my oxygen cart tucked by my feet. I’d worn my Chuck Taylors and my Ceci n’est pas une pipe shirt, the exact outfit I’d been wearing two
weeks before on the Late A fternoon of the Ve
backward flip-book of the last few months, begi
* * *
Two weeks later, I wheeled Gus across the art park toward Funky Bones with one entire bottle of very expensive champagne and my oxygen
tank in his lap. The champagne had been donated by one of Gus’s doctors—Gus being the kind of person who inspires doctors to give their
best bottles of champagne to children. We sat, Gus in his chair and me on the damp grass, as near to Funky Bones as we could get him in the chair. I pointed at the little kids goading each other to jump from rib cage to shoulder and Gus answered just loud enough for me to hear
over the din, “Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton.”
We drank from paper Wi
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Atypical day with late-stage Gus:
I went over to his house about noon, after he had eaten and puked up breakfast. He met me at the door in his wheelchair, no longer the
muscular, gorgeous boy who stared at me at Support Group, but still half smiling, still smoking his unlit cigarette, his blue eyes bright and alive.
We ate lunch with his parents at the dining room table. Peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and last night’s asparagus. Gus didn’t eat. I
asked how he was feeling.
“Grand,” he said. “A nd you?”
“Good. What’d you do last night?”
“I slept quite a lot. I want to write you a sequel, Hazel Grace, but I’m just so damned tired all the time.”
“You can just tell it to me,” I said.
“Well, I stand by my pre–Van Houten analysis of the Dutch Tulip Man. Not a con man, but not as rich as he was letting on.”
“A nd what about A
“Haven’t settled on an opinion there. Patience, Grasshopper.” A ugustus smiled. His parents were quiet, watching him, never looking
away, like they just wanted to enjoy The Gus Waters Show while it was still in town. “Sometimes I dream that I’m writing a memoir. A
memoir would be just the thing to keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public.”
“Why do you need an adoring public when you’ve got me?” I asked.
“Hazel Grace, when you’re as charming and physically attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet. But getting
strangers to love you . . . now, that’s the trick.”
I rolled my eyes.
A fter lunch, we went outside to the backyard. He was still well enough to push his own wheelchair, pulling miniature wheelies to get the front wheels over the bump in the doorway. Still athletic, in spite of it all, blessed with balance and quick reflexes that even the abundant narcotics could not fully mask.
His parents stayed inside, but when I glanced back into the dining room, they were always watching us.
We sat out there in silence for a minute and then Gus said, “I wish we had that swing set sometimes.”
“The one from my backyard?”
“Yeah. My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.”
“Nostalgia is a side effect of cancer,” I told him.
“Nah, nostalgia is a side effect of dying,” he answered. A bove us, the wind blew and the branching shadows rearranged themselves on