Tuesday – The Scaperat
Jan. 9th, 2008 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about the phone call I made to my cousin's, husband the evening after her death. He and I spoke for almost an hour, much to my surprise. I have only met him a couple times, and on both of those occasions we spoke a total of 4 words to each other. This wasn't because we disliked each other, but because he is a man of few words and Leslie was a woman of so many. When we met, Wren and I nodded and said "hi" to each other after Leslie introduced us, and that was it. Since she always did most of the talking, no further words were necessary or possible between her husband and me. According to Leslie, Wren likes me quite a bit, and considers me the least crazy of all her extended family. She told me she would always read the letters I wrote her out loud to him, and that they would both laugh at them until they cried. I had a hard time picturing this big, burly, quite truck driving laughing out loud like that, but I suppose some people are different behind closed doors than they are in front of strangers.
I came home from work that night and checked my incoming calls. At 10:01 that morning, there was a call from Leslie's cell phone, which always came across my caller ID as the word "TENNESSEE," but with no name. By then I knew that this call was made by Wren and not Leslie. At 10:03 there was a call from my oldest brother's phone. Both calls were made to my home number to tell me she was dead, but neither left a message because there are some things you just don't say in a recording. By 10:30, I already had the news from another cousin.
I looked at the number from Tennessee, made from a pink Razr phone that Leslie felt she just had to have last summer, only to decide it was more trouble than it was worth once she owned it and couldn't figure out how to use all the features. That small, girly pink phone must have looked odd in Wren's hands. Leslie told me she had made a list people he was to call for her when her son, Cameron, died, so she wouldn't have to. I know Wren probably made his way through that very list as the sun rose the morning after her death. I called Leslie's number back and left a message on her voicemail to let Wren know that I'd heard the news and to thank him for calling me. A few minutes later, he returned my call. I picked up the phone to hear him introduce himself in a slow, Southern accent, more notable than I remembered it now that he is live back home among his own kin again.
I started off by thanking him again, this time for standing by her side and taking care of her for all these years. This was no minor deed on his part; despite what she referred to him as, he was not legally her husband, and could have bailed at any time had he wanted to. Somewhere in Texas, her second husband – her legal husband who turned tail and ran after Cameron's aneurism – is tooling around and probably has no idea that he is a widower. Leslie's emotions were a like hurricane that could blow people away from her if their roots weren't strong enough to anchor them. Wren is like a solid and silent old oak tree, and all of Leslie's gale-forced pain could not blow him over or away from him. I told him he was just what she needed, and told him how much and how often she told me that she loved him.
"Yeah," he said, sounding more weary than anything else, "we made a good team."
He was silent for a second. "You know what makes me angry? This thing with Cameron was finally coming to a close, and she was about to start living for herself again. After he died, she was going to travel around with me in my truck, and we were going to see places and do things together, you know, as a couple."
I felt a little relieved to hear that I was not the only one quietly looking forward to Cameron's passing, so the ordeal would finally be over. Leslie worried that his death would destroy her, but I secretly believed that it would allow her to live again, to finally grieve and move on. Cameron's death is immanent, as his doctors have removed a tube from his bile duct that was draining the excess bile from his body. The site where the tube was is too deteriorated to reinsert it, and is only a matter of time before his liver shuts down as the bile builds up in his body.
I asked Wren what exactly happened; I had heard conflicting accounts from different family members.
He told me that had been up late watching television; there had been a marathon of the series Tin Man on the SciFi channel that they had both been looking forward to, and when it ended at midnight, Leslie decided to go to bed.
"After that she said she had a headache, and she got up from the couch to go lay down in the bedroom," he said. "A few seconds later, she called out my name, and by the time I got there she was laying on the floor, and she didn't have a pulse. I did CPR on her, I've done it before on somebody and been successful, until the ambulance arrived and they took over, but I couldn't bring her back.
"I know they did everything they could," he said, "The ambulance got here quick; they only had to come from just up the road. Both EMTs were in the back working on her, and the Sheriff drove to the hospital himself, and I followed them in the jeep. Then they worked on her for an hour once they got her to the emergency room. People kept rushing in and out of that room and no one was coming out to talk to me, so I knew that wasn't good. Then the doctor finally walks out, and I see that one of the attendants is crying, so I kind of guessed what was coming.
"But you know, they won't tell you anything, they make you figure it out. The doctor starts running through everything they did, we tried this, and we tried that, but we never did get any response and we weren't able to resuscitate her and so on and so on, until I stopped him and asked was he trying to say she was dead. Then he says, 'I'm afraid so.' I don't know why he just couldn't come out and tell me that in the first place."
I suggested that the doctor was afraid of what his reaction would be. Facing this large, bearded truck driver, he must have felt a need to justify why he wasn't bringing the news that he knew that this big, bear of a man wanted to hear. As a result, he was reduced to acting like a kid who makes excuses that the dog ate his homework, even though he did everything he was supposed to and spent hours working on it, until the teacher stops him and asks, "So are you trying to tell me that you don't have your assignment?" In this case, it was a man twice his size asking, "So, are you trying to tell me that my wife is dead?" And his answer, just like the kid without his homework, was, Yes, but please don't be angry. I'm sorry! I really tried and I did everything I was supposed to do!
The doctor need not have been afraid, as Wren is a reasonable and calm man in spite of his appearance. He had breathed his own breath into Leslie's body to try to bring her back, and used his own strong arms to make her heart pump blood. If he wasn't powerful enough to pull his wife from the jaws of death, he could hardly expect this skinny little doctor to be able to do it.
"So then I'm just standing there trying to take this in, and the tissue people come over to talk to me. She donated her body to science, you know, so they show up to do what they're going to do with her. And they start telling me, describing, what they are going to do to her body, until I had to tell them to shut up and just go away.
"Then, after I was done with all the paperwork, I come home. And she's not here anymore. But I am.
"But to let you know what kind of state I'm in, I walk through the door and walk in the kitchen and there's this rat caught on a glue trap. That rat had been tormenting Leslie, driving her nuts, for weeks, and the night she dies it finally gets caught on that trap. So I picked that trap up and I carried it to the bathroom and I threw it in the toilet. Then just I stood there and watched that rat drown, because I wanted to torture it for tormenting her, for making her so miserable when she was already going through so much and feeling so bad.
"I didn't feel bad about it, either. I figured it was the least I could do for Leslie, to make that rat pay for everything she'd been though."
Then Wren apologized and told me that he needed to go, because he still had other people to call. Afterward, I thought for awhile about Leslie and Wren and the rat, and about how when it came down to it, each was as small and helpless as the other in the face of things. I don't think Wren killed the rat the way he did for Leslie's sake, no matter what he said. I think he drowned it because he wanted to feel he had power, some control, over something, even if it was just a hapless rodent. Wren needed for someone or something to bear the brut of when he, himself, had endured in the hours between midnight and dawn that cold, awful December night, and the rat was just convenient.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I came home from work that night and checked my incoming calls. At 10:01 that morning, there was a call from Leslie's cell phone, which always came across my caller ID as the word "TENNESSEE," but with no name. By then I knew that this call was made by Wren and not Leslie. At 10:03 there was a call from my oldest brother's phone. Both calls were made to my home number to tell me she was dead, but neither left a message because there are some things you just don't say in a recording. By 10:30, I already had the news from another cousin.
I looked at the number from Tennessee, made from a pink Razr phone that Leslie felt she just had to have last summer, only to decide it was more trouble than it was worth once she owned it and couldn't figure out how to use all the features. That small, girly pink phone must have looked odd in Wren's hands. Leslie told me she had made a list people he was to call for her when her son, Cameron, died, so she wouldn't have to. I know Wren probably made his way through that very list as the sun rose the morning after her death. I called Leslie's number back and left a message on her voicemail to let Wren know that I'd heard the news and to thank him for calling me. A few minutes later, he returned my call. I picked up the phone to hear him introduce himself in a slow, Southern accent, more notable than I remembered it now that he is live back home among his own kin again.
I started off by thanking him again, this time for standing by her side and taking care of her for all these years. This was no minor deed on his part; despite what she referred to him as, he was not legally her husband, and could have bailed at any time had he wanted to. Somewhere in Texas, her second husband – her legal husband who turned tail and ran after Cameron's aneurism – is tooling around and probably has no idea that he is a widower. Leslie's emotions were a like hurricane that could blow people away from her if their roots weren't strong enough to anchor them. Wren is like a solid and silent old oak tree, and all of Leslie's gale-forced pain could not blow him over or away from him. I told him he was just what she needed, and told him how much and how often she told me that she loved him.
"Yeah," he said, sounding more weary than anything else, "we made a good team."
He was silent for a second. "You know what makes me angry? This thing with Cameron was finally coming to a close, and she was about to start living for herself again. After he died, she was going to travel around with me in my truck, and we were going to see places and do things together, you know, as a couple."
I felt a little relieved to hear that I was not the only one quietly looking forward to Cameron's passing, so the ordeal would finally be over. Leslie worried that his death would destroy her, but I secretly believed that it would allow her to live again, to finally grieve and move on. Cameron's death is immanent, as his doctors have removed a tube from his bile duct that was draining the excess bile from his body. The site where the tube was is too deteriorated to reinsert it, and is only a matter of time before his liver shuts down as the bile builds up in his body.
I asked Wren what exactly happened; I had heard conflicting accounts from different family members.
He told me that had been up late watching television; there had been a marathon of the series Tin Man on the SciFi channel that they had both been looking forward to, and when it ended at midnight, Leslie decided to go to bed.
"After that she said she had a headache, and she got up from the couch to go lay down in the bedroom," he said. "A few seconds later, she called out my name, and by the time I got there she was laying on the floor, and she didn't have a pulse. I did CPR on her, I've done it before on somebody and been successful, until the ambulance arrived and they took over, but I couldn't bring her back.
"I know they did everything they could," he said, "The ambulance got here quick; they only had to come from just up the road. Both EMTs were in the back working on her, and the Sheriff drove to the hospital himself, and I followed them in the jeep. Then they worked on her for an hour once they got her to the emergency room. People kept rushing in and out of that room and no one was coming out to talk to me, so I knew that wasn't good. Then the doctor finally walks out, and I see that one of the attendants is crying, so I kind of guessed what was coming.
"But you know, they won't tell you anything, they make you figure it out. The doctor starts running through everything they did, we tried this, and we tried that, but we never did get any response and we weren't able to resuscitate her and so on and so on, until I stopped him and asked was he trying to say she was dead. Then he says, 'I'm afraid so.' I don't know why he just couldn't come out and tell me that in the first place."
I suggested that the doctor was afraid of what his reaction would be. Facing this large, bearded truck driver, he must have felt a need to justify why he wasn't bringing the news that he knew that this big, bear of a man wanted to hear. As a result, he was reduced to acting like a kid who makes excuses that the dog ate his homework, even though he did everything he was supposed to and spent hours working on it, until the teacher stops him and asks, "So are you trying to tell me that you don't have your assignment?" In this case, it was a man twice his size asking, "So, are you trying to tell me that my wife is dead?" And his answer, just like the kid without his homework, was, Yes, but please don't be angry. I'm sorry! I really tried and I did everything I was supposed to do!
The doctor need not have been afraid, as Wren is a reasonable and calm man in spite of his appearance. He had breathed his own breath into Leslie's body to try to bring her back, and used his own strong arms to make her heart pump blood. If he wasn't powerful enough to pull his wife from the jaws of death, he could hardly expect this skinny little doctor to be able to do it.
"So then I'm just standing there trying to take this in, and the tissue people come over to talk to me. She donated her body to science, you know, so they show up to do what they're going to do with her. And they start telling me, describing, what they are going to do to her body, until I had to tell them to shut up and just go away.
"Then, after I was done with all the paperwork, I come home. And she's not here anymore. But I am.
"But to let you know what kind of state I'm in, I walk through the door and walk in the kitchen and there's this rat caught on a glue trap. That rat had been tormenting Leslie, driving her nuts, for weeks, and the night she dies it finally gets caught on that trap. So I picked that trap up and I carried it to the bathroom and I threw it in the toilet. Then just I stood there and watched that rat drown, because I wanted to torture it for tormenting her, for making her so miserable when she was already going through so much and feeling so bad.
"I didn't feel bad about it, either. I figured it was the least I could do for Leslie, to make that rat pay for everything she'd been though."
Then Wren apologized and told me that he needed to go, because he still had other people to call. Afterward, I thought for awhile about Leslie and Wren and the rat, and about how when it came down to it, each was as small and helpless as the other in the face of things. I don't think Wren killed the rat the way he did for Leslie's sake, no matter what he said. I think he drowned it because he wanted to feel he had power, some control, over something, even if it was just a hapless rodent. Wren needed for someone or something to bear the brut of when he, himself, had endured in the hours between midnight and dawn that cold, awful December night, and the rat was just convenient.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Anger
Date: 2008-01-09 10:14 pm (UTC)I knew it was anger, I hadn't thought of it being about a "need/desire" for control but I can see why you would think that. It's probably true, very perceptive of you.
Thanks for writing this, though I am sure it is hard.
Thinking of you.
Maria
Re: Anger
Date: 2008-01-10 06:51 pm (UTC)I've been needing to write about this rat since I heard about it's terrible end, to get it out of my head. It just didn't seem like a very Christmasy story to me, so I held onto it for a month.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-09 11:07 pm (UTC)And my heart aches for Wren, too. He sounds like an upstanding gentleman.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-09 11:38 pm (UTC)*HUGS NINA TIGHT*
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-09 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 04:57 pm (UTC)its good that leslie had the great friend in you as well as the man you describe above as being by her side... i think, whether or not you two believe it, that you meant more to her than she could probably express in words
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 06:42 pm (UTC)