To Paradise

For most of the night, Peter’s guests had been circling about him rather than engaging him directly. Sometimes someone near him would turn to him in the course of conversation with someone else—“Do you remember that night, Peter?”; “That guy, Peter, what was his name? You know, the one we met in Palm Springs”; “Peter, we’re talking about that trip we went on in seventy-eight”—but mostly, they talked only with one another, leaving Peter to sit there on the far end of the sofa, Charles at his side. They were all scared of Peter, David had long since realized, and now they were especially scared of him, because this was the last time they would see him and the pressure to say goodbye to him was so great that they were ignoring him instead. Peter, however, seemed content with his position. There was something majestic about his calm, the way he moved his gaze over his friends, all gathered there for him, occasionally nodding at something Charles said to him, like a massive old dog that sits by his master’s side and surveys the room, knowing that there would be no threats to his owner’s safety that night.

But now, suddenly, as if commanded by a call only they could hear, people began approaching Peter, one by one, bending and talking into his ear. John was among the first, and David nudged Charles, who made to stand, to leave and give Peter some privacy, but Peter placed his hand on Charles’s leg and Charles sat back down. And so, instead, he and David stayed, watching as John returned to his place in the chair on the other side of the room, and was replaced by Percival, and then Timothy, and then Norris and Julien and Christopher, who all in turn took Peter’s hands in their own and bent or knelt or sat beside him and spoke softly to him, having their final conversations. David was unable to hear most, or even all, of what they said, but he and Charles remained still, as if Peter were the emperor and these his ministers, come to deliver bits of news from across the realm, and they were servants, never meant to hear any of it and yet unable to flee back to the kitchen where they belonged.

Of course, what Peter’s friends had to say wasn’t confidential at all but banalities delivered with the intimacy of a secret. They spoke as if Peter were ancient, and his memory long gone. “I do remember, you know,” Peter would normally say, as he always did when someone prefaced a story with “Do you remember?” “I’m not that far gone.” But in this moment he seemed to have acquired a new kind of grace, one that manifested itself as patience, and he allowed each person to hold him against them, talking at him without seeming to need a response. He had not thought Peter would be interested in, much less capable of, being good at dying, but there he sat, generous and stately, listening to his friends, smiling at various moments, nodding his head and letting his hand be held:

“Do you remember that summer ten years ago when we took that tumbledown house in the Pines, Peter, and how one morning you went downstairs and there was that deer standing in the middle of the living room, eating the nectarines that Christopher had left on the counter?”

“I’ve always felt bad about that time we fought—you know what I’m talking about. I’ve always regretted it; I always wanted to take it back. I’m so sorry, Peter. Please tell me you forgive me.”

“Peter, I don’t know how I’m going to do this—all this—without you. I know it wasn’t always easy between us, but I’m going to miss you. You taught me so much—I just want to thank you.”

He had come to realize that it was when you were dying that people most wanted things from you—they wanted you to remember, they wanted reassurance, they wanted forgiveness. They wanted acknowledgment and redemption; they wanted you to make them feel better—about the fact that you were leaving while they remained; about the fact that they hated you for leaving them and dreaded it, too; about the fact that your death was reminding them of their own inevitable one; about the fact that they were so uncomfortable that they didn’t know what to say. Dying meant repeating the same things again and again, much as Peter was doing now: Yes, I remember. No, I’ll be fine. No, you’ll be fine. Yes, of course I forgive you. No, you shouldn’t feel guilty. No, I’m not in any pain. No, I know what you’re trying to say. Yes, I love you, too, I love you, too, I love you, too.

He listened to all of this, still pressed against Charles’s side, Charles’s left arm around him, his right arm around Peter’s shoulders. He had burrowed his face into Charles’s rib cage, like a child, so he could listen to Charles’s slow, steady breaths, so he could feel the heat of his body against his cheek. Charles’s left hand was tucked beneath his left arm, and now David reached up his hand and laced his fingers through Charles’s. The two of them were unnecessary to this part of the evening, but if you were observing them from above, the three of them would have appeared to be a single organism, a twelve-limbed, three-headed creature, one head nodding and listening, the other two silent and immobile, the three of them kept alive by a single, enormous heart, one that steadily, uncomplainingly beat in Charles’s chest, sending bright, clean blood through the yards of arteries that connected all three of their forms, filling them with life.