I knew Picky wasn’t deaf, but I found myself pointing to the name tag on my chest, and mouthing Alan.
Picky lifted a small whiteboard and orange marker off his hospital bed, and wrote hi, Alan.
I asked him how he was doing.
He erased, wrote, and showed me fine.
“Do you have much pain?” I said.
He looked at me with eyes black and dense as onyx, then at his board. He pointed at fine.
I could smell the marker stink from ten feet away.
Picky was my first one-on-one, live patient, after I had spent six months on the volunteer telephone hotline at Oregon Cancer Support Network. Picky had requested OCSN help. He lived alone and had no family.
“Are they treating you okay?” I said.
While Picky kept his head down, squeaking his pen across the board, I inspected the top of his scalp. It was the color of sawdust, and covered with baby chick fuzz.
aint the rits, he wrote. His smile revealed brownish toothless gums.
I stepped closer to his bed. I wanted to pull the blanket up to cover Picky’s hairless scrawny thighs, sticking out of his hospital gown, but I just met the man.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I said.
im ok.
I could not imagine what I could do for him. He had lost part of his mouth to cancer. He didn’t have a soul in the world who cared enough to be there. And he didn’t seem to have any needs.
I turned down Picky’s offer of a chair, and stayed standing, leaning toward the door. All the questions I thought of required more than a three-word answer, such as “Where did you get your name?” and “What are your hopes for the future?”
I said, loudly enunciating, “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself. I will call you so I can set up a home visit, probably next week.”
Picky nodded his head and mouthed, “Thank you.” He grinned at me, in what I assumed was appreciation, but I didn’t get much warmth. His mouth had turned down too quickly. The eyes stayed as hooded and wary as a horned toad’s. I vowed to myself to break through, to befriend and enliven this helpless little man. As I had vowed to my sister’s memory, after she died of leukemia, to make a difference.
I patted a bump at the bottom of Picky’s bed, where I imagined his feet were, and left the room, feeling loathsome by the bleakness of the man’s life. When I pushed the button on the elevator, I thought, “Call him. Really?”
●
A week later, I drove into Eastmoreland, the government-assisted-housing neighborhood where Picky lived. I relayed the message that I was coming through my supervisor at OCSN and Picky’s social worker. Rolling through Eastmoreland, I watched every movement. I had read about a gang shooting in the newspaper just a week before. I parked in front of the single-story, ochre-colored duplex with Picky’s address on it. I sat, breathing deep to keep my stomach down. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this. I could drive away and tell them to send another volunteer. I needed more training, or maybe a client with less to deal with. This guy didn’t seem to care if he got help or not. What was I going to add to his hopeless life? My heartbeat thumped in my throat. I put my shoulder into the car door and pushed it open. Half the battle, they told us in training, is to show up.
As I stepped up the walk to Picky’s, a guy sitting on the steps of the building across the street returned my stare from behind a black hoody. I knew I should have brought my wife’s oldToyotainstead of my BWM. Ten feet from Picky’s, I heard his television. I rapped on the aluminum frame of the screen door with my knuckle. Through the mesh, I saw Picky rise from a couch and head my way.
“Hey, man, it’s Alan. How you doing?” I called.
Picky pushed on the door to let me enter.
I offered my hand for him to shake. “Good to see you, my man,” I said.
I looked down at least a foot to the top of his head. He shook my hand, loose, moist, and quick, and spun off toward his seat. I passed a small kitchen, clean white appliances and bare counters. I sat on the couch, next to Picky. On the TV screen, Tom Selleck in a dark blue, red, and fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, climbed into a red Ferrari. I smelled cigarette smoke, imagining that it came from the apartment next door. There was no way Picky would be smoking with part of his throat, palate and tongue gone to cancer. On an end table, next to a bulbous lime-green ceramic lamp, sat an ashtray, brimming with a smoldering pile of butts. What the hell. Was he suicidal? I should have stood, said, “Sorry, I got to go,” and walked out. The sooner, the better, for everyone. No more worrying about my car out front or what to say to this wreck of a human being. But I sat and stared at the television show. I thought about my sister. Picky didn’t need me to judge him. I could offer the slightest bit of company and consolation.
“So, how you been feeling?” I said, turning my head toward Picky and raising my voice over the volume of a commercial for a technical college.
He reached around the arm of the couch and pulled up his white board and marker. I watched him scribble sick.
“Treatment?”
He nodded his head.
“Radiation?” I asked, looking at his thin, leathery lips as if that’s where the answer would come.
He mouthed “and chemo.” The breathy, blunted voice that came out sounded as if he were a deaf speaker.
“Brutal,” I replied.
He laid his board on his lap and went back to the television. I joined, wondering if I could sneak a look at my watch. If I lifted my arm, Picky would know what I was up to. I glanced for a clock, around the living room and small empty dinette, opposite the kitchen. The couch, two tables, lamp and TV were the only furnishings in the house. The off-white walls lay bare.
I didn’t see any point in asking Picky any more questions. When the show ended, I would excuse myself and leave. I sat on a cheap cloth sofa, in one of the worst parts ofPortland, next to a small, odd man about whom I knew nothing. A stranded dying stranger. My presence seemed to be enough. We were one, he and I, in space and time. A moment of real truth.
As the end credits for Magnum rolled on the screen, I slid forward on the couch. It seemed too soon to go. Another episode of the same program came on. I could watch it, put in the time, and exit. I rested my back against the cushion. I thought the actors’ antics were funny, but neither Picky nor I laughed aloud. We sat three feet apart without talking. It seemed to suit him, but I felt that if I didn’t say something, I wasn’t doing my job.
“How long have you lived here?” I said, during the next commercial break.
Picky turned his head and said, “Two months. Section Eight,” barely forming the words. When the show reappeared, he laid the board on the coffee table. He didn’t offer me anything to eat or drink, or ask if I was comfortable.
At the end of the program, I stood and said, “I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself.”
Picky nodded.
I pushed through the screen door. Air entered my body and I yelped with relief. I hurried toward my car. Inside, I put the key in the ignition and thought about Picky sitting in that empty place, alone. How long was it reasonable for me to sit there with him? I held my head up, narrowed my vision, and drove away.
●
Two weeks later, I stood on Picky’s porch, rocking on my heels. He walked toward me along the sidewalk.
“There he is now,” I said.
He looked better than the last time I saw him, but he was still stick thin and alabaster pale. He walked with a funny sort of hunched swagger. As always, I was surprised by the flintiness of his eyes.
“Missed the bus,” he said, when he reached the door.
“Did you go to treatment?”
“Radiation.” His speech was much clearer than before.
He went in his apartment and let the screen slam shut behind him. I pulled it open to enter. Picky stood at the kitchen counter, opening a can of Ensure. He carried it to the living room, turned on the television with the remote, and lowered himself on to his couch.
Don Johnson, as Sonny Crockett, wearing a powder blue tee and silver sports jacket, was talking in a phone booth.
“How have you been doing with the treatment?” I said.
“Sucks. Harder than chemo,” Picky said, glancing at me. “Saps my strength.” He sported a full set of false teeth, which made his s’s whistle.
“Do the doctors say how things are going?”
He stared at me.
“Do they say when your treatment will end? Are you making progress? Do they think you can beat the cancer?”
“They don’t say. They tell me six weeks and we’ll see.”
I could not see myself sitting on that couch for another month and a half, watching reruns, asking inane questions and dying to escape. I thought about how uncharitable I truly was, despite my intentions.
“Do you have family, Picky?” The first personal question I had dared to ask.
He lowered the volume of the television. “I have a son,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I’ve spent most of my life locked up. I drove everybody away.”
“I’m sorry.” I said.
“It’s not on you. I made my bed.”
I considered the new twist. Hardened ex-con, who seemed harmless, even pathetic, at the end of his road. Could we trust each other?
The end of Miami Vice played, and I spoke my exit line. “Picky, probably time for me to get going.”
“Please stay a little longer,” he said. The first thing he had asked of me. “Please.”
I searched for an excuse, but stayed put.
During the next episode of Miami Vice, I said, “Does the name Picky have to do with your past?”
He smiled and shook his head. “My parents named me Pickworth Z. Walker.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I’m not even going to ask what the Z stands for.”
“Zigfried,” Picky said. “Picky Ziggy.”
We laughed hard together. He barked like a seal. I felt relaxed, for the first time in that room. I could breathe, but still found it hard to sit still.
When the program ended, I rose to my feet. Picky stood with me. “Think you can take me to the store? Real quick.” he said.
“I said I have to go.”
He looked at me and waited. I felt resentment rise. Here it goes, I thought, he’s playing me. “Real quick,” I said, leading him out the door.
Seated next to him in my car, I told Picky, “You have to use the seat belt. Otherwise, I could get a ticket.”
He barely reached the head rest. He snapped his belt. “Nice wheels,” he said, looking around and breathing deep, as if he just walked into the Bellagio.
I felt nervous that he knew anything about my life. “My wife’s,” I lied.
“Go right out of here and turn left at the signal. The store’s at the top of the hill,” Picky said.
I pulled into the lot of the Ore-WA gas station and up to the entrance of the QuikieShop. Picky opened his door and tried to get out without undoing his harness. He leaned back in and I pushed the button next to his seat. “There you go,” I said. “Easier that way.”
Picky laughed and left the car.
As he pushed into the store, I thought that it might be a familiar scenario for him. Short, skinny, unassuming guy comes in for a soda and Hershey bar and pulls a gun. He never said why he was in prison, but he did say for most of his life. It had to be serious. Was I the wheel man?
Picky pushed back out the door with a small paper bag tucked in his arm. He climbed in and buckled up. “Okay. Good,” he said.
“What did you get?” I asked.
Picky looked over at me. “Diet coke and two packs of Salems.”
I felt my face burn. If he didn’t care, why should I? I said not one word back down the hill and into the projects. Picky looked out the window as ferns, pink and white rhododendrons, and scrub alders passed by on the hillside. I dropped him off in front of his place.
“Thanks,” Picky said, and slammed the car door. He never glanced back.
“Right,” I said, accelerating out of there.
●
As I walked up to Picky’s door a week later, after a talk with my supervisor, I vowed to be honest, straighter with how I felt. If I didn’t agree with what Picky asked of me, I said no, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I needed boundaries.
“Not feeling so good,” Picky said, as he slouched to his couch.
Tom Selleck jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. “I’m sorry to hear that, Picky. The radiation?”
“Back on chemo, with radiation. Both now.”
“What does your doctor tell you?”
“She says we need one more strong push.”
Picky watched the action on the screen for a full minute. I studied the side of his face. It was hard to tell how old he was. His skin was sallow and crinkled, but he held his jaw line. I guessed fifties. His sparse yellow-gray hair spiked around the edges, over his ears and neckline. I searched his bare arms for tattoos, but saw none.
“You up for it?” I said.
“Don’t see lot of options, Alan.” Picky shot me a dark, flinty glance.
“So, you have hope for the future?” I didn’t see how I could keep it light. The man was fighting for his life, and I was sitting beside him. Those were my options. I could stay or bail. As often as I glanced toward the door, I stayed on the couch.
“Been running on hope long as I can remember. For things to get better,” Picky said. “When I was incarcerated, what kept me going was picturing some normal civilian life. A place to live, job, car, maybe even a little traveling. I got out, then I got sick. I just keep moving down the line, best I can.”
“If there’s something I can do, let me know.” I felt his bleak need cover me like a thick liquid.
The TV showed a close-up of Magnum’s mustachioed, dimpled smile.
“Would you mind grabbing me a can of Ensure there on the sink?” Picky said.
“Not a problem.” I walked the few steps to the kitchen, and returned with his meal.
As one detective show flicked into another, Picky said, “What does your wife do?”
Alicia had nothing to do with me sitting in that room. I did not want to bring her into it. Did he know he was pushing me?
“She works for a foundation. Fundraiser.”
“Where do you live?” he said.
“BySteelBridge. By the river.”
“I never been to that part of the city. I guess I have a brother lives somewhere near there. Besides going to the hospital on the bus, I don’t get out much.”
I kept my eyes on the flickering movement on the television screen.
I wasn’t sure what he wanted. He said he had a brother nearby. Did he want me to contact him? Drive him by there? I wondered if his son lived in town. Maybe they could help him out. Maybe they would want to know. I excused myself to the bathroom.
“I have to get going,” I told Picky as I walked back into the room.
“Can you stay for one more show? Please.”
“Picky. I have to go. When I say I have to go, I really have to go.”
“Right. Get back to your fundraising wife and big house by the river.”
I took long strides to the door. When I looked back, Picky kept his eyes straight ahead, sipping his lunch from a can.
●
I took two weeks off, and avoided checking in at OCSN. I did hear that another service volunteer went to visit Picky. When I was away from him, I recommitted myself to being there for him, as I wished I had for my sister. I assumed on a Saturday morning I would find him home. He told me that he didn’t leave except to go to the hospital, and I doubted he would have treatment on the weekend.
Going into Eastmoreland, I passed three empty police cars along the curb, idling, drivers’ doors open, blue lights pulsing, and no one in sight. As I walked up to Picky’s, I saw his door stood wide open. When I reached the porch, I heard the whir of a vacuum cleaner, coming from his bedroom. I stepped into the empty living room and called, “Hello? Picky?”
The noise continued, so I followed it back. A stout, middle agedLatina, wearing a long denim skirt and cerise short-sleeve sweater, clicked off her machine, as I waved my arm.
“Mr. Walker?” I said. I glanced at the stripped twin bed, head against the middle of the unadorned wall. I backed out of the doorway, as she said. “Are you a relative?”
“Friend.”
“I’m sorry, but the gentleman died. Right here.” She pointed at the bed. “A week ago.”
I was out of the hall when she called, “I can give you a phone number.” As I passed through the front door, the vacuum cleaner whirred again.
I called my supervisor and she confirmed that Pickworth Z. Walker died, alone, in his bed. The apartment manager found him.
“I wasn’t there,” I mumbled into the phone.
“Alan, don’t go there. We do the best we can,” she said. “We can’t save anybody, or make their lives substantively different. That’s not our job. We provide some small amount of support and comfort. That’s it.”
The man died alone. In the middle of the dark, cold, conniving night. Not one living soul in the relative, connected universe cared enough to be there when he passed. His last vision was one of shadows and nothingness.
I sat in the leather seat of my BMW, bowed my head, and mourned the passing of a man, a miserable, wasted human life, as I had that of my young, gifted, vibrant sister. I didn’t look up for a long time, to see who might be lurking around.
I knew Picky wasn’t deaf, but I found myself pointing to the name tag on my chest, and mouthing Alan.
Picky lifted a small whiteboard and orange marker off his hospital bed, and wrote hi, Alan.
I asked him how he was doing.
He erased, wrote, and showed me fine.
“Do you have much pain?” I said.
He looked at me with eyes black and dense as onyx, then at his board. He pointed at fine.
I could smell the marker stink from ten feet away.
Picky was my first one-on-one, live patient, after I had spent six months on the volunteer telephone hotline at Oregon Cancer Support Network. Picky had requested OCSN help. He lived alone and had no family.
“Are they treating you okay?” I said.
While Picky kept his head down, squeaking his pen across the board, I inspected the top of his scalp. It was the color of sawdust, and covered with baby chick fuzz.
aint the rits, he wrote. His smile revealed brownish toothless gums.
I stepped closer to his bed. I wanted to pull the blanket up to cover Picky’s hairless scrawny thighs, sticking out of his hospital gown, but I just met the man.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I said.
im ok.
I could not imagine what I could do for him. He had lost part of his mouth to cancer. He didn’t have a soul in the world who cared enough to be there. And he didn’t seem to have any needs.
I turned down Picky’s offer of a chair, and stayed standing, leaning toward the door. All the questions I thought of required more than a three-word answer, such as “Where did you get your name?” and “What are your hopes for the future?”
I said, loudly enunciating, “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself. I will call you so I can set up a home visit, probably next week.”
Picky nodded his head and mouthed, “Thank you.” He grinned at me, in what I assumed was appreciation, but I didn’t get much warmth. His mouth had turned down too quickly. The eyes stayed as hooded and wary as a horned toad’s. I vowed to myself to break through, to befriend and enliven this helpless little man. As I had vowed to my sister’s memory, after she died of leukemia, to make a difference.
I patted a bump at the bottom of Picky’s bed, where I imagined his feet were, and left the room, feeling loathsome by the bleakness of the man’s life. When I pushed the button on the elevator, I thought, “Call him. Really?”
●
A week later, I drove into Eastmoreland, the government-assisted-housing neighborhood where Picky lived. I relayed the message that I was coming through my supervisor at OCSN and Picky’s social worker. Rolling through Eastmoreland, I watched every movement. I had read about a gang shooting in the newspaper just a week before. I parked in front of the single-story, ochre-colored duplex with Picky’s address on it. I sat, breathing deep to keep my stomach down. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this. I could drive away and tell them to send another volunteer. I needed more training, or maybe a client with less to deal with. This guy didn’t seem to care if he got help or not. What was I going to add to his hopeless life? My heartbeat thumped in my throat. I put my shoulder into the car door and pushed it open. Half the battle, they told us in training, is to show up.
As I stepped up the walk to Picky’s, a guy sitting on the steps of the building across the street returned my stare from behind a black hoody. I knew I should have brought my wife’s oldToyotainstead of my BWM. Ten feet from Picky’s, I heard his television. I rapped on the aluminum frame of the screen door with my knuckle. Through the mesh, I saw Picky rise from a couch and head my way.
“Hey, man, it’s Alan. How you doing?” I called.
Picky pushed on the door to let me enter.
I offered my hand for him to shake. “Good to see you, my man,” I said.
I looked down at least a foot to the top of his head. He shook my hand, loose, moist, and quick, and spun off toward his seat. I passed a small kitchen, clean white appliances and bare counters. I sat on the couch, next to Picky. On the TV screen, Tom Selleck in a dark blue, red, and fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, climbed into a red Ferrari. I smelled cigarette smoke, imagining that it came from the apartment next door. There was no way Picky would be smoking with part of his throat, palate and tongue gone to cancer. On an end table, next to a bulbous lime-green ceramic lamp, sat an ashtray, brimming with a smoldering pile of butts. What the hell. Was he suicidal? I should have stood, said, “Sorry, I got to go,” and walked out. The sooner, the better, for everyone. No more worrying about my car out front or what to say to this wreck of a human being. But I sat and stared at the television show. I thought about my sister. Picky didn’t need me to judge him. I could offer the slightest bit of company and consolation.
“So, how you been feeling?” I said, turning my head toward Picky and raising my voice over the volume of a commercial for a technical college.
He reached around the arm of the couch and pulled up his white board and marker. I watched him scribble sick.
“Treatment?”
He nodded his head.
“Radiation?” I asked, looking at his thin, leathery lips as if that’s where the answer would come.
He mouthed “and chemo.” The breathy, blunted voice that came out sounded as if he were a deaf speaker.
“Brutal,” I replied.
He laid his board on his lap and went back to the television. I joined, wondering if I could sneak a look at my watch. If I lifted my arm, Picky would know what I was up to. I glanced for a clock, around the living room and small empty dinette, opposite the kitchen. The couch, two tables, lamp and TV were the only furnishings in the house. The off-white walls lay bare.
I didn’t see any point in asking Picky any more questions. When the show ended, I would excuse myself and leave. I sat on a cheap cloth sofa, in one of the worst parts ofPortland, next to a small, odd man about whom I knew nothing. A stranded dying stranger. My presence seemed to be enough. We were one, he and I, in space and time. A moment of real truth.
As the end credits for Magnum rolled on the screen, I slid forward on the couch. It seemed too soon to go. Another episode of the same program came on. I could watch it, put in the time, and exit. I rested my back against the cushion. I thought the actors’ antics were funny, but neither Picky nor I laughed aloud. We sat three feet apart without talking. It seemed to suit him, but I felt that if I didn’t say something, I wasn’t doing my job.
“How long have you lived here?” I said, during the next commercial break.
Picky turned his head and said, “Two months. Section Eight,” barely forming the words. When the show reappeared, he laid the board on the coffee table. He didn’t offer me anything to eat or drink, or ask if I was comfortable.
At the end of the program, I stood and said, “I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself.”
Picky nodded.
I pushed through the screen door. Air entered my body and I yelped with relief. I hurried toward my car. Inside, I put the key in the ignition and thought about Picky sitting in that empty place, alone. How long was it reasonable for me to sit there with him? I held my head up, narrowed my vision, and drove away.
●
Two weeks later, I stood on Picky’s porch, rocking on my heels. He walked toward me along the sidewalk.
“There he is now,” I said.
He looked better than the last time I saw him, but he was still stick thin and alabaster pale. He walked with a funny sort of hunched swagger. As always, I was surprised by the flintiness of his eyes.
“Missed the bus,” he said, when he reached the door.
“Did you go to treatment?”
“Radiation.” His speech was much clearer than before.
He went in his apartment and let the screen slam shut behind him. I pulled it open to enter. Picky stood at the kitchen counter, opening a can of Ensure. He carried it to the living room, turned on the television with the remote, and lowered himself on to his couch.
Don Johnson, as Sonny Crockett, wearing a powder blue tee and silver sports jacket, was talking in a phone booth.
“How have you been doing with the treatment?” I said.
“Sucks. Harder than chemo,” Picky said, glancing at me. “Saps my strength.” He sported a full set of false teeth, which made his s’s whistle.
“Do the doctors say how things are going?”
He stared at me.
“Do they say when your treatment will end? Are you making progress? Do they think you can beat the cancer?”
“They don’t say. They tell me six weeks and we’ll see.”
I could not see myself sitting on that couch for another month and a half, watching reruns, asking inane questions and dying to escape. I thought about how uncharitable I truly was, despite my intentions.
“Do you have family, Picky?” The first personal question I had dared to ask.
He lowered the volume of the television. “I have a son,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I’ve spent most of my life locked up. I drove everybody away.”
“I’m sorry.” I said.
“It’s not on you. I made my bed.”
I considered the new twist. Hardened ex-con, who seemed harmless, even pathetic, at the end of his road. Could we trust each other?
The end of Miami Vice played, and I spoke my exit line. “Picky, probably time for me to get going.”
“Please stay a little longer,” he said. The first thing he had asked of me. “Please.”
I searched for an excuse, but stayed put.
During the next episode of Miami Vice, I said, “Does the name Picky have to do with your past?”
He smiled and shook his head. “My parents named me Pickworth Z. Walker.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I’m not even going to ask what the Z stands for.”
“Zigfried,” Picky said. “Picky Ziggy.”
We laughed hard together. He barked like a seal. I felt relaxed, for the first time in that room. I could breathe, but still found it hard to sit still.
When the program ended, I rose to my feet. Picky stood with me. “Think you can take me to the store? Real quick.” he said.
“I said I have to go.”
He looked at me and waited. I felt resentment rise. Here it goes, I thought, he’s playing me. “Real quick,” I said, leading him out the door.
Seated next to him in my car, I told Picky, “You have to use the seat belt. Otherwise, I could get a ticket.”
He barely reached the head rest. He snapped his belt. “Nice wheels,” he said, looking around and breathing deep, as if he just walked into the Bellagio.
I felt nervous that he knew anything about my life. “My wife’s,” I lied.
“Go right out of here and turn left at the signal. The store’s at the top of the hill,” Picky said.
I pulled into the lot of the Ore-WA gas station and up to the entrance of the QuikieShop. Picky opened his door and tried to get out without undoing his harness. He leaned back in and I pushed the button next to his seat. “There you go,” I said. “Easier that way.”
Picky laughed and left the car.
As he pushed into the store, I thought that it might be a familiar scenario for him. Short, skinny, unassuming guy comes in for a soda and Hershey bar and pulls a gun. He never said why he was in prison, but he did say for most of his life. It had to be serious. Was I the wheel man?
Picky pushed back out the door with a small paper bag tucked in his arm. He climbed in and buckled up. “Okay. Good,” he said.
“What did you get?” I asked.
Picky looked over at me. “Diet coke and two packs of Salems.”
I felt my face burn. If he didn’t care, why should I? I said not one word back down the hill and into the projects. Picky looked out the window as ferns, pink and white rhododendrons, and scrub alders passed by on the hillside. I dropped him off in front of his place.
“Thanks,” Picky said, and slammed the car door. He never glanced back.
“Right,” I said, accelerating out of there.
●
As I walked up to Picky’s door a week later, after a talk with my supervisor, I vowed to be honest, straighter with how I felt. If I didn’t agree with what Picky asked of me, I said no, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I needed boundaries.
“Not feeling so good,” Picky said, as he slouched to his couch.
Tom Selleck jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. “I’m sorry to hear that, Picky. The radiation?”
“Back on chemo, with radiation. Both now.”
“What does your doctor tell you?”
“She says we need one more strong push.”
Picky watched the action on the screen for a full minute. I studied the side of his face. It was hard to tell how old he was. His skin was sallow and crinkled, but he held his jaw line. I guessed fifties. His sparse yellow-gray hair spiked around the edges, over his ears and neckline. I searched his bare arms for tattoos, but saw none.
“You up for it?” I said.
“Don’t see lot of options, Alan.” Picky shot me a dark, flinty glance.
“So, you have hope for the future?” I didn’t see how I could keep it light. The man was fighting for his life, and I was sitting beside him. Those were my options. I could stay or bail. As often as I glanced toward the door, I stayed on the couch.
“Been running on hope long as I can remember. For things to get better,” Picky said. “When I was incarcerated, what kept me going was picturing some normal civilian life. A place to live, job, car, maybe even a little traveling. I got out, then I got sick. I just keep moving down the line, best I can.”
“If there’s something I can do, let me know.” I felt his bleak need cover me like a thick liquid.
The TV showed a close-up of Magnum’s mustachioed, dimpled smile.
“Would you mind grabbing me a can of Ensure there on the sink?” Picky said.
“Not a problem.” I walked the few steps to the kitchen, and returned with his meal.
As one detective show flicked into another, Picky said, “What does your wife do?”
Alicia had nothing to do with me sitting in that room. I did not want to bring her into it. Did he know he was pushing me?
“She works for a foundation. Fundraiser.”
“Where do you live?” he said.
“BySteelBridge. By the river.”
“I never been to that part of the city. I guess I have a brother lives somewhere near there. Besides going to the hospital on the bus, I don’t get out much.”
I kept my eyes on the flickering movement on the television screen.
I wasn’t sure what he wanted. He said he had a brother nearby. Did he want me to contact him? Drive him by there? I wondered if his son lived in town. Maybe they could help him out. Maybe they would want to know. I excused myself to the bathroom.
“I have to get going,” I told Picky as I walked back into the room.
“Can you stay for one more show? Please.”
“Picky. I have to go. When I say I have to go, I really have to go.”
“Right. Get back to your fundraising wife and big house by the river.”
I took long strides to the door. When I looked back, Picky kept his eyes straight ahead, sipping his lunch from a can.
●
I took two weeks off, and avoided checking in at OCSN. I did hear that another service volunteer went to visit Picky. When I was away from him, I recommitted myself to being there for him, as I wished I had for my sister. I assumed on a Saturday morning I would find him home. He told me that he didn’t leave except to go to the hospital, and I doubted he would have treatment on the weekend.
Going into Eastmoreland, I passed three empty police cars along the curb, idling, drivers’ doors open, blue lights pulsing, and no one in sight. As I walked up to Picky’s, I saw his door stood wide open. When I reached the porch, I heard the whir of a vacuum cleaner, coming from his bedroom. I stepped into the empty living room and called, “Hello? Picky?”
The noise continued, so I followed it back. A stout, middle agedLatina, wearing a long denim skirt and cerise short-sleeve sweater, clicked off her machine, as I waved my arm.
“Mr. Walker?” I said. I glanced at the stripped twin bed, head against the middle of the unadorned wall. I backed out of the doorway, as she said. “Are you a relative?”
“Friend.”
“I’m sorry, but the gentleman died. Right here.” She pointed at the bed. “A week ago.”
I was out of the hall when she called, “I can give you a phone number.” As I passed through the front door, the vacuum cleaner whirred again.
I called my supervisor and she confirmed that Pickworth Z. Walker died, alone, in his bed. The apartment manager found him.
“I wasn’t there,” I mumbled into the phone.
“Alan, don’t go there. We do the best we can,” she said. “We can’t save anybody, or make their lives substantively different. That’s not our job. We provide some small amount of support and comfort. That’s it.”
The man died alone. In the middle of the dark, cold, conniving night. Not one living soul in the relative, connected universe cared enough to be there when he passed. His last vision was one of shadows and nothingness.
I sat in the leather seat of my BMW, bowed my head, and mourned the passing of a man, a miserable, wasted human life, as I had that of my young, gifted, vibrant sister. I didn’t look up for a long time, to see who might be lurking around.
I knew Picky wasn’t deaf, but I found myself pointing to the name tag on my chest, and mouthing Alan.
Picky lifted a small whiteboard and orange marker off his hospital bed, and wrote hi, Alan.
I asked him how he was doing.
He erased, wrote, and showed me fine.
“Do you have much pain?” I said.
He looked at me with eyes black and dense as onyx, then at his board. He pointed at fine.
I could smell the marker stink from ten feet away.
Picky was my first one-on-one, live patient, after I had spent six months on the volunteer telephone hotline at Oregon Cancer Support Network. Picky had requested OCSN help. He lived alone and had no family.
“Are they treating you okay?” I said.
While Picky kept his head down, squeaking his pen across the board, I inspected the top of his scalp. It was the color of sawdust, and covered with baby chick fuzz.
aint the rits, he wrote. His smile revealed brownish toothless gums.
I stepped closer to his bed. I wanted to pull the blanket up to cover Picky’s hairless scrawny thighs, sticking out of his hospital gown, but I just met the man.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I said.
im ok.
I could not imagine what I could do for him. He had lost part of his mouth to cancer. He didn’t have a soul in the world who cared enough to be there. And he didn’t seem to have any needs.
I turned down Picky’s offer of a chair, and stayed standing, leaning toward the door. All the questions I thought of required more than a three-word answer, such as “Where did you get your name?” and “What are your hopes for the future?”
I said, loudly enunciating, “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself. I will call you so I can set up a home visit, probably next week.”
Picky nodded his head and mouthed, “Thank you.” He grinned at me, in what I assumed was appreciation, but I didn’t get much warmth. His mouth had turned down too quickly. The eyes stayed as hooded and wary as a horned toad’s. I vowed to myself to break through, to befriend and enliven this helpless little man. As I had vowed to my sister’s memory, after she died of leukemia, to make a difference.
I patted a bump at the bottom of Picky’s bed, where I imagined his feet were, and left the room, feeling loathsome by the bleakness of the man’s life. When I pushed the button on the elevator, I thought, “Call him. Really?”
●
A week later, I drove into Eastmoreland, the government-assisted-housing neighborhood where Picky lived. I relayed the message that I was coming through my supervisor at OCSN and Picky’s social worker. Rolling through Eastmoreland, I watched every movement. I had read about a gang shooting in the newspaper just a week before. I parked in front of the single-story, ochre-colored duplex with Picky’s address on it. I sat, breathing deep to keep my stomach down. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this. I could drive away and tell them to send another volunteer. I needed more training, or maybe a client with less to deal with. This guy didn’t seem to care if he got help or not. What was I going to add to his hopeless life? My heartbeat thumped in my throat. I put my shoulder into the car door and pushed it open. Half the battle, they told us in training, is to show up.
As I stepped up the walk to Picky’s, a guy sitting on the steps of the building across the street returned my stare from behind a black hoody. I knew I should have brought my wife’s oldToyotainstead of my BWM. Ten feet from Picky’s, I heard his television. I rapped on the aluminum frame of the screen door with my knuckle. Through the mesh, I saw Picky rise from a couch and head my way.
“Hey, man, it’s Alan. How you doing?” I called.
Picky pushed on the door to let me enter.
I offered my hand for him to shake. “Good to see you, my man,” I said.
I looked down at least a foot to the top of his head. He shook my hand, loose, moist, and quick, and spun off toward his seat. I passed a small kitchen, clean white appliances and bare counters. I sat on the couch, next to Picky. On the TV screen, Tom Selleck in a dark blue, red, and fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, climbed into a red Ferrari. I smelled cigarette smoke, imagining that it came from the apartment next door. There was no way Picky would be smoking with part of his throat, palate and tongue gone to cancer. On an end table, next to a bulbous lime-green ceramic lamp, sat an ashtray, brimming with a smoldering pile of butts. What the hell. Was he suicidal? I should have stood, said, “Sorry, I got to go,” and walked out. The sooner, the better, for everyone. No more worrying about my car out front or what to say to this wreck of a human being. But I sat and stared at the television show. I thought about my sister. Picky didn’t need me to judge him. I could offer the slightest bit of company and consolation.
“So, how you been feeling?” I said, turning my head toward Picky and raising my voice over the volume of a commercial for a technical college.
He reached around the arm of the couch and pulled up his white board and marker. I watched him scribble sick.
“Treatment?”
He nodded his head.
“Radiation?” I asked, looking at his thin, leathery lips as if that’s where the answer would come.
He mouthed “and chemo.” The breathy, blunted voice that came out sounded as if he were a deaf speaker.
“Brutal,” I replied.
He laid his board on his lap and went back to the television. I joined, wondering if I could sneak a look at my watch. If I lifted my arm, Picky would know what I was up to. I glanced for a clock, around the living room and small empty dinette, opposite the kitchen. The couch, two tables, lamp and TV were the only furnishings in the house. The off-white walls lay bare.
I didn’t see any point in asking Picky any more questions. When the show ended, I would excuse myself and leave. I sat on a cheap cloth sofa, in one of the worst parts ofPortland, next to a small, odd man about whom I knew nothing. A stranded dying stranger. My presence seemed to be enough. We were one, he and I, in space and time. A moment of real truth.
As the end credits for Magnum rolled on the screen, I slid forward on the couch. It seemed too soon to go. Another episode of the same program came on. I could watch it, put in the time, and exit. I rested my back against the cushion. I thought the actors’ antics were funny, but neither Picky nor I laughed aloud. We sat three feet apart without talking. It seemed to suit him, but I felt that if I didn’t say something, I wasn’t doing my job.
“How long have you lived here?” I said, during the next commercial break.
Picky turned his head and said, “Two months. Section Eight,” barely forming the words. When the show reappeared, he laid the board on the coffee table. He didn’t offer me anything to eat or drink, or ask if I was comfortable.
At the end of the program, I stood and said, “I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself.”
Picky nodded.
I pushed through the screen door. Air entered my body and I yelped with relief. I hurried toward my car. Inside, I put the key in the ignition and thought about Picky sitting in that empty place, alone. How long was it reasonable for me to sit there with him? I held my head up, narrowed my vision, and drove away.
●
Two weeks later, I stood on Picky’s porch, rocking on my heels. He walked toward me along the sidewalk.
“There he is now,” I said.
He looked better than the last time I saw him, but he was still stick thin and alabaster pale. He walked with a funny sort of hunched swagger. As always, I was surprised by the flintiness of his eyes.
“Missed the bus,” he said, when he reached the door.
“Did you go to treatment?”
“Radiation.” His speech was much clearer than before.
He went in his apartment and let the screen slam shut behind him. I pulled it open to enter. Picky stood at the kitchen counter, opening a can of Ensure. He carried it to the living room, turned on the television with the remote, and lowered himself on to his couch.
Don Johnson, as Sonny Crockett, wearing a powder blue tee and silver sports jacket, was talking in a phone booth.
“How have you been doing with the treatment?” I said.
“Sucks. Harder than chemo,” Picky said, glancing at me. “Saps my strength.” He sported a full set of false teeth, which made his s’s whistle.
“Do the doctors say how things are going?”
He stared at me.
“Do they say when your treatment will end? Are you making progress? Do they think you can beat the cancer?”
“They don’t say. They tell me six weeks and we’ll see.”
I could not see myself sitting on that couch for another month and a half, watching reruns, asking inane questions and dying to escape. I thought about how uncharitable I truly was, despite my intentions.
“Do you have family, Picky?” The first personal question I had dared to ask.
He lowered the volume of the television. “I have a son,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I’ve spent most of my life locked up. I drove everybody away.”
“I’m sorry.” I said.
“It’s not on you. I made my bed.”
I considered the new twist. Hardened ex-con, who seemed harmless, even pathetic, at the end of his road. Could we trust each other?
The end of Miami Vice played, and I spoke my exit line. “Picky, probably time for me to get going.”
“Please stay a little longer,” he said. The first thing he had asked of me. “Please.”
I searched for an excuse, but stayed put.
During the next episode of Miami Vice, I said, “Does the name Picky have to do with your past?”
He smiled and shook his head. “My parents named me Pickworth Z. Walker.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I’m not even going to ask what the Z stands for.”
“Zigfried,” Picky said. “Picky Ziggy.”
We laughed hard together. He barked like a seal. I felt relaxed, for the first time in that room. I could breathe, but still found it hard to sit still.
When the program ended, I rose to my feet. Picky stood with me. “Think you can take me to the store? Real quick.” he said.
“I said I have to go.”
He looked at me and waited. I felt resentment rise. Here it goes, I thought, he’s playing me. “Real quick,” I said, leading him out the door.
Seated next to him in my car, I told Picky, “You have to use the seat belt. Otherwise, I could get a ticket.”
He barely reached the head rest. He snapped his belt. “Nice wheels,” he said, looking around and breathing deep, as if he just walked into the Bellagio.
I felt nervous that he knew anything about my life. “My wife’s,” I lied.
“Go right out of here and turn left at the signal. The store’s at the top of the hill,” Picky said.
I pulled into the lot of the Ore-WA gas station and up to the entrance of the QuikieShop. Picky opened his door and tried to get out without undoing his harness. He leaned back in and I pushed the button next to his seat. “There you go,” I said. “Easier that way.”
Picky laughed and left the car.
As he pushed into the store, I thought that it might be a familiar scenario for him. Short, skinny, unassuming guy comes in for a soda and Hershey bar and pulls a gun. He never said why he was in prison, but he did say for most of his life. It had to be serious. Was I the wheel man?
Picky pushed back out the door with a small paper bag tucked in his arm. He climbed in and buckled up. “Okay. Good,” he said.
“What did you get?” I asked.
Picky looked over at me. “Diet coke and two packs of Salems.”
I felt my face burn. If he didn’t care, why should I? I said not one word back down the hill and into the projects. Picky looked out the window as ferns, pink and white rhododendrons, and scrub alders passed by on the hillside. I dropped him off in front of his place.
“Thanks,” Picky said, and slammed the car door. He never glanced back.
“Right,” I said, accelerating out of there.
●
As I walked up to Picky’s door a week later, after a talk with my supervisor, I vowed to be honest, straighter with how I felt. If I didn’t agree with what Picky asked of me, I said no, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I needed boundaries.
“Not feeling so good,” Picky said, as he slouched to his couch.
Tom Selleck jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. “I’m sorry to hear that, Picky. The radiation?”
“Back on chemo, with radiation. Both now.”
“What does your doctor tell you?”
“She says we need one more strong push.”
Picky watched the action on the screen for a full minute. I studied the side of his face. It was hard to tell how old he was. His skin was sallow and crinkled, but he held his jaw line. I guessed fifties. His sparse yellow-gray hair spiked around the edges, over his ears and neckline. I searched his bare arms for tattoos, but saw none.
“You up for it?” I said.
“Don’t see lot of options, Alan.” Picky shot me a dark, flinty glance.
“So, you have hope for the future?” I didn’t see how I could keep it light. The man was fighting for his life, and I was sitting beside him. Those were my options. I could stay or bail. As often as I glanced toward the door, I stayed on the couch.
“Been running on hope long as I can remember. For things to get better,” Picky said. “When I was incarcerated, what kept me going was picturing some normal civilian life. A place to live, job, car, maybe even a little traveling. I got out, then I got sick. I just keep moving down the line, best I can.”
“If there’s something I can do, let me know.” I felt his bleak need cover me like a thick liquid.
The TV showed a close-up of Magnum’s mustachioed, dimpled smile.
“Would you mind grabbing me a can of Ensure there on the sink?” Picky said.
“Not a problem.” I walked the few steps to the kitchen, and returned with his meal.
As one detective show flicked into another, Picky said, “What does your wife do?”
Alicia had nothing to do with me sitting in that room. I did not want to bring her into it. Did he know he was pushing me?
“She works for a foundation. Fundraiser.”
“Where do you live?” he said.
“BySteelBridge. By the river.”
“I never been to that part of the city. I guess I have a brother lives somewhere near there. Besides going to the hospital on the bus, I don’t get out much.”
I kept my eyes on the flickering movement on the television screen.
I wasn’t sure what he wanted. He said he had a brother nearby. Did he want me to contact him? Drive him by there? I wondered if his son lived in town. Maybe they could help him out. Maybe they would want to know. I excused myself to the bathroom.
“I have to get going,” I told Picky as I walked back into the room.
“Can you stay for one more show? Please.”
“Picky. I have to go. When I say I have to go, I really have to go.”
“Right. Get back to your fundraising wife and big house by the river.”
I took long strides to the door. When I looked back, Picky kept his eyes straight ahead, sipping his lunch from a can.
●
I took two weeks off, and avoided checking in at OCSN. I did hear that another service volunteer went to visit Picky. When I was away from him, I recommitted myself to being there for him, as I wished I had for my sister. I assumed on a Saturday morning I would find him home. He told me that he didn’t leave except to go to the hospital, and I doubted he would have treatment on the weekend.
Going into Eastmoreland, I passed three empty police cars along the curb, idling, drivers’ doors open, blue lights pulsing, and no one in sight. As I walked up to Picky’s, I saw his door stood wide open. When I reached the porch, I heard the whir of a vacuum cleaner, coming from his bedroom. I stepped into the empty living room and called, “Hello? Picky?”
The noise continued, so I followed it back. A stout, middle agedLatina, wearing a long denim skirt and cerise short-sleeve sweater, clicked off her machine, as I waved my arm.
“Mr. Walker?” I said. I glanced at the stripped twin bed, head against the middle of the unadorned wall. I backed out of the doorway, as she said. “Are you a relative?”
“Friend.”
“I’m sorry, but the gentleman died. Right here.” She pointed at the bed. “A week ago.”
I was out of the hall when she called, “I can give you a phone number.” As I passed through the front door, the vacuum cleaner whirred again.
I called my supervisor and she confirmed that Pickworth Z. Walker died, alone, in his bed. The apartment manager found him.
“I wasn’t there,” I mumbled into the phone.
“Alan, don’t go there. We do the best we can,” she said. “We can’t save anybody, or make their lives substantively different. That’s not our job. We provide some small amount of support and comfort. That’s it.”
The man died alone. In the middle of the dark, cold, conniving night. Not one living soul in the relative, connected universe cared enough to be there when he passed. His last vision was one of shadows and nothingness.
I sat in the leather seat of my BMW, bowed my head, and mourned the passing of a man, a miserable, wasted human life, as I had that of my young, gifted, vibrant sister. I didn’t look up for a long time, to see who might be lurking around.