“Hours. Maybe a day.” There was a pause. “Do you know what your uncle is sick from, Joe?”
“AIDS. I mean, I know they have other things on the charts. Pneumonia. But I know what it is.”
“You’re not worried, are you? That you’ll get it, just from living with him?”
“No.”
“Good. It’s important you know that.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you want to talk about your uncle’s arrangements? I understand that you turned eighteen recently. You can help me get some paperwork signed. Would that be okay?”
“Sure, if I can help.”
“Okay, come on over and have a seat.” Stephen took one of the visitor chairs and Joe settled into the one next to it.
“He was really good to me. I shouldn’t have gone on this trip. I knew he was sick, but . . . he said he wanted me to go.” Joe burned with shame. “And I wanted to go, so I just went. It was selfish.”
“I’m sure he wanted you to go. I’m sure he’s glad you did.”
“We were supposed to talk,” Joe said, “when I came back. That was this coming weekend, but the program put me on a plane this morning.”
“It’s okay, really. The good news is that your uncle took care of almost everything.”
As Joe would learn, that was an understatement. Mike Carroll had planned for his death long before Joe knew he was seriously ill. He was to be cremated; that was already paid for. There was no life insurance—Mike had already sold the policy—but there was a trust set up for Joe’s education. There was no mention of Robbie or their mother.
Joe knew a little bit about the trust. He was attending Monsignor Farrell High School on an academic scholarship and would attend Fordham University in the fall. He was an excellent student, one of the most accomplished at Farrell. College was provided for, so Joe just had to stay on the path. It was so clear that he had given little thought to it, even as his uncle weakened.
How selfish I’ve been.
He lowered his head, wiping his eyes and choking back a sob.
“It’s okay to be upset,” Stephen said.
“It’s more like . . . I never appreciated what he was doing for me. This whole time, he was just . . . setting things up for me. I mean, who am I?” He looked up at Stephen as if he might have a satisfactory answer. “I’m some kid who got dumped on his doorstep.”
“He really loved you,” Stephen said. Joe absorbed those words—the smooth, level tone—and something in him broke. Stephen was right, although Mike had never said those words. No one had told Joe that they loved him since his mother. For a terrible second he thought he was hyperventilating. Then Stephen leaned in and put his arm around his shoulder.
“Let it out, Joe,” he said in the practiced, measured tone of a funeral director. It seemed strange, Joe would think later, for a person just a few years older than him to be so well versed in grief. “It’s okay, just . . . let it out.”
CHAPTER 76
Friday, September 29, 2017
Harbor View Rehabilitation Center
Staten Island
6:59 p.m.
“You never met him?” Joe asked. He was speaking in a low voice, although that didn’t seem to matter. The supine figure in the bed hadn’t seemed to register that anyone was talking at all.
“I never did,” Nate said. “Mike told me all about him. He visited regularly, but I never went along.”
“Was he ever more responsive than this?”
Nate shook his head. “Mike never mentioned it, if he was. I think he’s been this way for quite a while. Most people in his state don’t survive this long. He’s been well cared for.”
Joe leaned on the windowsill. He was between Charles’s bed and the window. Nate was in the guest chair. He saw himself at Bayley Seton again, a gangly kid in a rumpled suit staring down with sadness and confusion at the shriveled man under a sheet. Charles looked far more peaceful than Uncle Mike had in the extremities of death. There were no tubes attached to his twin, at least for now. His head, which seemed much larger than his body, was tilted away. He had graying hair, like Joe, and the same long lashes and heavy eyebrows. His eyes and his mouth were both half-closed. Joe noticed a bit of drool on his cheek and gently wiped it away with a tissue.
“I feel like I should have known,” he said. “You know how they say twins have a connection? Or, when they’re separated at birth, they still feel the other one, out there somewhere? I never felt that.”