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University of Northern Iowa
Strange Things Can Happen around MidnightAuthor(s): James T. McGowanSource: The North American Review, Vol. 291, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2006), pp. 10-19Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25150905 .
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Strange Things Can Happen Around Midnight A STORY BY JAMES T. McGOWAN
The week of my father's dying, about a month after all
the hospice stuff started, what I would think about most
often was this: summer conditioning for freshman foot
ball, and my father and me running along the old coal roads that
ribboned Three Bear Mountain, his long, loping strides necessi
tating my shorter, choppier ones just so I could keep up. Sweat
streaming down his face and shirtless torso, his breathing loud
and deep, his arms pumping madly, whooping crazily every once
in a while out of sheer joy for how good a body felt when worked
hard. This is what he must have been like when he was a kid, I
remember thinking, as I also sweated and whooped, this was what
he was like when he was happy. When he'd start to slow down, he'd furiously
wave me on.
"Make the fourth quarter yours, Eddie," he'd gasp out, "Make
the fourth quarter yours."
I'd turn around and jog backwards for a bit so I could watch
him. Bent over, his hands braced on his thighs, his chest heaving, his gasps echoing right to me, the sweaty strands of his long hair
in tendrils, and then I'd go all out, and I'd run and run until my calves began to quiver and my thighs turned rubbery, as far up the
mountain as I could go. When Fd stop and wait until my
breathing became normal, Fd walk in a circle, my skin cooling even in a hot breeze, shaking one leg then the other as though
trying to rid my sneakers of a candy wrapper. He'd be out of sight
by then, but I imagined him doing the same thing, shaking each
leg so they wouldn't cramp. By the time I'd walk back down to
him, he'd be tamping out his second or third Pall Mall with the
tip of a sneaker.
"Remember," he'd say, hacking up phlegm and hawking it into
a bush, "Smoking's bullshit. Don't ever start."
For the most part in our hospice watch, I took the early
morning and early evening shifts to watch over him, while my older sister Eileen covered most of the day. We switched nights. The rest of the time, we relied on Elise, our hospice partner, a nurse whose unobtrusive ways blended easily into ours,
correcting us gently when we went about things the wrong way,
though there was not a whole lot to do. Dad slept most of the
time, stirring only when we fed him, or cleaned him up, or when the pain got too great and his thumb started going crazy on the activator for his morphine pump. It had been that way
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JAMES T. McGOWAN
since his third stroke, a result ofthe cancer?glioblastoma multi
forme?that was chewing up his brain. He also had aphasias,
Wernicke's and Broca's.
"They're common outcomes when the brain has been insulted
to the degree that your father's has," Doc Kraynock told Eileen
and me after we took Dad home this last time. He's been our
family doctor since forever and took over Dad's care again when
the neurologist signed off. "He probably won't recognize you, and
words will have no meaning. They're just sounds. Language doesn't exist for him anymore."
That turned out to be pretty accurate. If Dad were awake and
pain free, he'd turn his head to follow our movements and voices, but his eyes were wary and bewildered and softened only when we
fed him or washed him up. It was heartbreaking to see him that
way, of course. His limbs and head more bone than flesh, his
trunk flat-out awful, shrunken and quivering most of the time,
the skin on his face all motley and easily nicked when we'd shave
him, his mostly useless left side just there. I spent a lot of time
fussing about his room, following the protocols that Elise set up, but it didn't amount to much. Don't buy the idea that developing a routine helps in any way. It doesn't. Ever.
No one else really came around. Father Murtaugh maybe
once
a week, Doc Kraynock about the same. "I don't have that touch to
make friends," my father told me once, soon after my mother left
for good, moving clear across the country from Pennsylvania to
Vancouver, Washington. "For me, family comes first." By that, he
meant Eileen and me. He was the only child of elderly parents, both of whom died when I was very young, and he and my
mother just had lots of problems. She also was an only child, and
her parents moved a long time ago to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We
didn't see them often. Still don't. I was a senior in high school when our mother left, leaving me
and Eileen to help Dad maintain his latest business, lawn care, which he started the spring of that year, a couple of months
before our mother took off. Unlike all his other business
ventures?locksmithing, roofing, floor refinishing, furniture
restoration?the lawn business eventually was wildly successful
for him, and in my mind I somehow connected it with our
mother's leaving us, as though he?all of us, really?had finally been freed from her unfocused rages and inconsistent ways. Later
on, when he first started to feel bad and I got more involved in the
business, he laughed when I explained my theory to him.
"Jesus Christ, you can be stupid," he'd said, leaning back
in his office chair and blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling,
stabbing it with a finger. "It was her idea that I get into lawn care.
Said I needed something simple and loud so I'd keep my head
straight. She was right. Listen, the best thing she ever did for
herself and me was to dump my sad ass."
What even he couldn't deny, though, was how often Eileen
started coming around the house after our mother left, a rare
occurrence following Eileen's graduation from high school, three
years before me. She and our mother banged heads a lot, over
boys, hair, clothing, the tattooed Claddaghs on Eileen's ankles and
her pierced lip and left eyebrow, her future aspirations. Within a
week after high school, Eileen got her own place across town and
started a series of jobs that left her between nowhere and
nowhere, as she put it, but with the lawn care business, she'd come
into her own. She was terrific with paperwork, precise and unre
lenting, and did all of our advertising. She designed the ad for the
phonebook and newspaper, a picture of Dad in a tuxedo and top hat lounging atop a gleaming Viking MT780, a champagne flute
tilted elegantly at the audience, our slogan, "Hughie Faye's Perfect
Lawns," bannered across the top. She also handled all the calls, for
complaints or whatever, something Dad hated to do. Right about
then, she'd hooked up with the last of her "local wood ticks," as
Dad called all of her boyfriends up to that time. "She'll do better than that," he'd say, winking as she slid into a car or on a motor
cycle, smiling grandly at whoever she was with. "You watch." He
was right about that. On one of her infrequent trips out to
Vancouver, where our mother had opened a pottery studio, Eileen
met an outfitter's guide, Terrance, who wanted to start up his own
outfit, but the competition out there was ferocious. When he
heard about the Lehigh River from Eileen, that was that. Two
reconnaissance trips back our way, and he was settled in
with Eileen. Dad lent him the seed money to get going, but Terrance took it from there and now has the biggest
rafting/canoeing/orienteering business on the river.
Sports turned out to be great for me in high school?outside
linebacker/tight end in the fall, power forward in the winter, weight thrower in the spring. I topped out at six-three, an inch shorter than my dad, with a wider frame though less bulk. I took the foot
ball scholarship to Lock Haven and started as the middle linebacker
my freshman year, but it didn't work out. By the middle of spring football my junior year, I'd had it with everything. My girlfriend,
my classes, football, the whole goddamned town, so I just left. On
the Tuesday evening before our spring game, right after our two
hour study time, I said adios to my roommate, a darting halfback
from Wilkes-Barre, tossed what stuff I wanted into my Accord, and was back in Sykesville within three hours. Dad was on the top step ofthe porch when I got there. He didn't quite look at me as I slowly
made my way toward him, staring instead at the tumbler he rolled between his palms, as though it contained the most fascinating thing in the world. It was about a quarter full of Jameson's over ice, the bottle nestled between his thighs on the step below. Moon shadows were
everywhere, and the owls were loud.
"Coach Martin called," he said.
"I imagine he did," I said. He shook his head slightly then, draining his glass, clopping it
the top step beside him, setting his blue-gray eyes straight on me.
"What's going on?" he said.
"I don't want to be there any more."
"A free ride?" he said. "Football?"
"Dad," I said, setting my backpack on the cement steps, butt
leaning against the banister. "The classes bore me to death, and there ain't no NFL scouts roaming the sidelines of Hubert Jack Stadium."
"Janelle?"
"That's been dead and gone since Christmas."
A sigh came out of him then, and he set his elbows on his knees, his thick fingers steepled, tapping them against his pursed lips. He
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sighed again, spreading his fingers and hands wide, as though
ready to explain the incomprehensible, like faith or truth or love.
"Your mother?"
"I'll call her," I said. "I'll tell her it was completely my decision.
That you had nothing to do with it."
"She won't believe that."
"Then that's her problem."
I could hear the anger in my voice, and
it was apparent he did too. He clasped his
hands and stared at me, his eyes narrowed, his tongue probing his left
cheek, as though he wasn't quite sure who
or what he was staring at. I wouldn't look
away from him, setting my jaw the way he
did when Mom used to go off on him.
When he stood up, snatching the Jameson's bottle and the
tumbler with one hand, he winced, freezing himself.
"Goddamn back," he said, gingerly side-stretching right then
left, slowly rotating his trunk, all the while massaging his lower
back. "And tomorrow is going to be a bitch of a day." "I want to go with you."
"Yeah, well, we'll see," he said over his shoulder as he went
inside.
Surprisingly, my mother was almost serene when I told her
what I'd done. I caught her in her studio when I called her that
night, and the whole time I gabbed into the phone?my words
coming out way too fast, I felt?she said nothing. When I
finished, she let the silence build, though in the echoing hollow ness of her speaker phone, I could hear the muted rumbling of
her pottery wheel, punctuated by her breathing, the squish of her
fingers on wet clay.
"Would you like to move out here?"
"No," I said. "Nothing like that. I want to join Dad's business."
Again, the silence.
"Well," she said, "I think it unwise, but I guess you have to
follow your own whistle."
That was the mom I hadn't quite gotten used to yet. When
she lived with us, it was crazy. Too many times when Eileen
would get home from school or me from practice, she'd be
drunk, the house stinking of cigarettes, and she'd get on us for
hours about whatever. When Eileen moved out, it was mostly me who had a front row seat to her rantings. Sometimes, she'd start throwing things, her clothes off our back porch, all the
cushions in the house down the cellar steps, or rip up her
flowerbeds, tossing hostas and marigolds out into the street,
laughing the whole time. Dad pretty much just stayed away,
coming home real late when he hoped she'd passed out.
Sometimes she did, but if not, nobody got sleep. Occasionally, she'd check out for a weekend, holing herself up in Stan's
Roadside Inn on the edge of town, the three of us taking turns
sitting in the lobby so she wouldn't do something really weird.
We'd knock on her door every once in a while until she'd answer. Other times, for weeks on end, everything would be
fine. The house clean, meals cooked, she'd walk about singing or humming, replant her flowerbeds, paint some rooms. She
I'd had it with every thing. My girlfriend, my classes, football, the whole goddamned town, so I just left.
threw herself into getting the lawn business going, setting up a
filing system, securing bids, on the phone constantly, every
thing. Then she was gone, with no notice of any kind, just a
note taped to the refrigerator: "Vancouver, Washington!!! My new home!!! Be HAPPY for me!!!" It was a mess for a while after
she left, but eventually, everything sort of settled down. She
talked about her leaving with me only once, about a year after she left, on my
first visit out to see her.
"Eddie," she'd said, "I had to save
myself. The only way to do so was to sever
all my ties to the past, though I knew it would only be temporary for you and
Eileen, but I had to do it, and I do not
wish to discuss this any further."
So we haven't, and I don't see what would be gained by doing so. Eileen and I don't talk about it much either, and Dad had only
good things to say about her. In some ways, it seemed he clung to
the idea that she might end up missing Pennsylvania and would
find her way back, but I never thought so. If you saw her in
Vancouver, with new friends, new clothes, new hairstyle, new
everything, you'd think, not a chance.
The morning after I left Lock Haven, it was cool and overcast, and when I got to the business, a converted auto repair shop about a mile from the house, Dad was already there, hooking up his flatbed trailer to his truck, two riding mowers and a push
mower in the maw of a garage bay, where his two workers, both
older guys I didn't know, were checking this and that. Every year, he'd have a new crew, hired when I was at Lock Haven. When I got out of my car and waved, Dad jerked a thumb toward the office
and kept on fussing with the trailer. The two guys nodded at me
but kept their faces blank, and I nodded back. Inside, Terrance,
perched on Eileen's desk, looked up from what he was reading when the customer bell on the door tinkled, but my sister just
kept on keyboarding.
"Hey, Big Fella," Terrance said.
"Terry," I said.
"Here," Eileen said, snatching a sheet of paper out of her printer
and holding it out to me without looking my way. "Eileen," I said as I took the paper, a list of addresses and what
needed to be done at them. My voice was low, not quite
pleading but not far away either. Her piercings were gone, I
noticed.
"Today," she said, "is not a good day to talk to me. Use the other
pickup. Dad already loaded the tools."
When I looked at Terrance, he shrugged and held up both
hands as though he had nothing to do with it. Once outside in the
cool April air, I just looked around. A pale fog clung to the hard
woods on the mountain across the way, traffic was picking up,
and small knots of school kids chattered and kibitzed on their way to the bus stop at the edge of our property. An engine roared, and
Dad crossed the parking lot, raising one finger off the steering wheel by way of salute, and I waved back. The two guys just stared out the front windshield. As I watched his truck and flatbed rattle out onto the highway, I kept blinking my eyes, finding it hard to
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JAMES T. McGOWAN
believe how much everything had changed since I left Lock Haven
the night before, but there it was.
Even I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the scut jobs my dad assigned to me?edging, trimming, raking flower beds, gutter
cleaning, servicing all our vehicles, general cleanup of the shop.
Every morning, when the weather was good, I'd get my list from
Eileen, a follow up of things that needed to be done after the main
mowing was done. I'd grind through it until I broke for lunch,
usually at The Blue Comet or the VFW, then grind it out the rest
of the day until the sun gave out. When the weather was bad, I'd
get at the mowers, tuning them up, cleaning them until they shone, honing the blades; or Fd attack the tool rack, polishing the
tools, rearranging them; or I'd get rid of all the crap that tends, to
gather in corners or on racks. On those days, Dad would some
times be in the office, but he mostly wasn't there. Eileen began
splitting her time between our business and Terrance's, where she
also did the paperwork. The two other workers just stayed away.
They only mowed, just like my dad. They were paid off tlfe books
and were only there when my dad called them. I don't know what
they did otherwise. Neither did my dad.
"Who knows?" Dad said when I asked him. "They hustle up a
buck here, a dime there."
When I'd get home in the evenings, I'd find Dad on either the
front or back porch, sipping from his tumbler, sometimes eating a sandwich. He'd always ask how the day went, but he'd have this
smile on his face, as though he were thinking, Oh, yeah, Today's the day this wood tick'll stop being a wood tick, J bet he's thinking, To hell with this shit, but the thought never entered my mind. I
had no desire to go back to Lock Haven, not even when I tried to
force my thoughts into thinking I should want to go back. I
relished being alone. That was the thing, and I could easily see
myself doing this for a long time, maybe even taking over the
business someday. That had a very strong appeal for me, taking over a business that my dad started.
When I wasn't on the job, I pretty much stayed at home,
watching the Phillies in their latest disastrous season, reading the
magazines and books my dad had on lawn maintenance and the
lawn business, lifting weights, sleeping a lot. Whenever I'd run
into someone I knew, ex-teammates or onetime friends, their
older brothers or their fathers, the conversation followed a similar arc.
The coaches were assholes, right?
No, they were good guys.
What was her name, the one who broke your heart?
That had nothing to do with it.
The classes wore you down.
Nope, they just didn't interest me.
They'd smile knowingly then, as though they understood why I had to play it cool, nodding their heads when I wouldn't say
anything else. A couple-three dates went nowhere, and by the end
of June, I was beginning to think I made a mistake, but then
everything changed. When I showed up one morning, Eileen was
leaning back in her chair, silent and staring at me, tapping the eraser end of a pencil against her teeth. She stared at me the whole
time until I was at her desk and kept staring at me when I poured
myself some coffee, glanced at the empty printer, stood around
like an idiot. "What?"
"You serious about this?" she said. "Quitting school and every
thing?" "I don't know," I said, shrugging, sipping my coffee. "Probably." "Dad thinks you're trashing a golden opportunity, and Mom
thinks you're trying to relive Dad's life. Show him how to do it
right."
"That's bull," I said.
"That's what Terrance said, more or less. I'm not so sure. Maybe
you're just depressed or confused."
"No," I said. "Not at all."
She stared and tapped the pencil some more, then abruptly turned to her computer and started deleting everything from
three o'clock on.
"Well, if you are going to stay," she said. "I'm going to have to
show you how things get done. Dad sucks at paperwork, as you
know, and I have to spend more time at Terrance's. His business
is going crazy."
There was more to it than that, of course. There always is. For
about a month, she had been talking it up about how fabulous
Terrance's business was, how she was finding parts of herself she never knew existed.
"He's showing me how to be a rafting guide. Thinks I'm a
natural," she'd say after swooping into the house on a Sunday
evening with a bunch of checks and other stuff for Dad to sign, breathless, her eyes large and glowing. Or it'd be "I know how to use a
compass." Or, "Did you know that moss only grows on the
south side of hardwoods?" The topper was, "You know, nature's
not too bad." This from someone who would go ballistic ifan ant or a gnat got anywhere
near her. Who was a "sullen rat," in our
mother's words, whenever we went camping or
hiking when we
were kids. When she swooped out again, Dad just stared after her.
"Yep," he said. "Office'll be empty without her."
Paperwork was something that I was good at, too, and by late
July, when one of the workers, Allan, said he had enough, and I
started mowing, I changed a lot of stuff. Automated billing for our customers and vendors, a cell phone and pager for when I was
out of the office, doing most of the keyboarding at night after I was finished with the field work. I even showed Eileen how to set
up some of the same stuff for Terrance's business. When things started to slow down by mid-October, I was there when Dad told the other worker, Grant, that his season was over.
"Compadre," my dad said when he gave Grant his pay enve
lope. "You're a good man."
Without taking his eyes off my dad, Grant fingered the enve
lope with one hand, testing the thickness of the bills inside.
"It's double what you were expecting."
"Time to go," Grant said.
"Time to go," my dad said.
"Maybe next year," Grant said.
"Maybe," my dad said, then tilted his head my way. "But if the
boy's here?"
"?I'll be here."
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"?then I don't know."
Nodding, as if to say, yeah, well, that's the way life is, Grant darted his eyes at me, at my dad, at the envelope.
"Okay, then," he said. "I'll check in around March."
"Cool," my dad said.
When he was gone, my dad turned to me.
"I'll need him next year," he said. "Or somebody, but you gotta
keep 'em on edge."
"I will be here, you know."
"Either way, we'll still need somebody," my dad said.
After Thanksgiving, a big spread that Eileen put on for the four
of us, we put the blades on the pickups for our winter business, snow plowing, mostly parking lots?all of the Sykesville churches, the donut shop, both gas stations, a handful of bars, Baran's Supermarket, Quinn's Hardware, Doc Kraynock's?a
bunch of driveways and sidewalks. When there was no snow, we
worked on the mowers.
"We'll strip them down to the last bolt," my dad said. "That way, we'll get at least a couple-three more years out of 'em."
Cleaning, greasing, and oiling them, he meant. Full-bore main
tenance, he called it, but it was about then when I first noticed
how things weren't quite right with him. He'd stamp his left foot at odd times, while washing dishes or folding clothes, shaking the
foot vigorously between each stamp, or he'd put down a wrench or an oil rag when we were working
on the mowers and slowly
start flexing his fingers, staring at them as though they were
someone else's, or he'd start off a day testy and wouldn't go to the
shop because his head "felt like someone was rooting around in it
with an ice pick." Other things, too. He quit smoking, flat out, and
he cut way down on his eating. Everything tastes gray, he told me.
He gobbled Extra Strength Tylenol until his stomach felt like
sandpaper was scraping it, he said. His clothes started to swamp him, the bones in his hands becoming stark, the knuckles promi nent. Skin sagged off his chin. When I suggested he see Doc
Kraynock, he waved the thought away.
"Forget it," he said. "That old bastard doesn't know his ass from
third base."
Even Eileen, who could bully him into just about anything, had no luck in getting him to see Doc Kraynock or anyone else for that
matter. Near the end of January, it all came to a head. We were
clearing off Brazzo's parking lot early in the morning. The snow
had stopped, and there was little traffic. I had everything from the
gas pumps out to the street, while my dad was getting all the
parking slots close to the building. On his second pass, I caught him
in the rearview mirror as his driving suddenly went nuts, his pickup
zigging toward the building then veering away, skidding sideways a
bit, but eventually plowing into a wooden fence, knocking down a
good portion of it. I was there quick, shouldering open my door
before I had even come to a complete stop, jamming the gear shift
into park, the frigid air smacking my face, my breath a bright cloud as I ran to his truck. When I wrenched open the passenger door, he
was slumped against his door, his right hand shaking so much, his
fingers just fumbled with the keys in the ignition. "Jesus Christ, Dad, what the hell happened?" I said as I pushed
his hand away and turned off his truck.
When he tried to talk, all that came out was "Unth, unth." I pulled him upright, his good hand desperately gripping mine.
The left side of him sagged, his right eye roving wildly, his mouth opening and closing, nothing coming out but "Unth, unth, unth."
"Dad, it's all right. I'm calling 911," I said, as I scrabbled in my
pockets for my cell phone. C'mon, you bastards, is what I kept
thinking until someone clicked on and I rattled out everything. "Ten minutes," the lady on the phone said, "Keep your father
comfortable and refrain from doing anything. Wait for the EMT's."
Until someone showed up, my dad struggled to move, pawing to get a grip on something with his good hand, as I said over and
over, "Dad, stay still. They said you're not supposed to move. Stay still." The wild look in his eye scared me, and I ended up pressing a forearm against his chest so all he could do was thrash in place. The left side of his face looked awful, collapsed, as though the
bone and muscle had just given up, the eyelids of his left eye relaxed into a narrow slit.
That was his first stroke, of course, and it's when everything else came out. The next couple days it was all tests?blood, PET
scans, MRIs, CAT scans, a needle biopsy?the whole deal. Until we got to hear the results, we pretty much covered the hospital full
time, leaving only when he was out for the night, sometimes me
alone, sometimes Eileen and Terrance, sometimes all three of us
at the same time. When Eileen wasn't crying, she was furiously
filling page after page of a small notebook with questions about
his condition, what we should do, what we should expect, and all
that.
Dad wanted to sleep more than anything, squeezing his eyes shut, turning his head away whenever a nurse or one of the ther
apists tried to engage him, but they had him out of bed a lot,
getting him to walk, making him talk. He mumbled and slurred
when he talked, but you could make it out if you listened closely. On the third afternoon, after his physical therapy, he looked
completely exhausted when he was back in bed. He turned his
head slowly right, left, his right eye darting between the three of us. Then he jabbed a finger at the shaved spots where they attached a halo to do the needle biopsy.
"Alien abduction," he whispered.
It was the first real laugh we'd had since his stroke, and I began to have the crazy idea that maybe everything would be OK, but
that didn't last long. Early that evening, when the neurologist, Dr.
Patel, finally showed up, he didn't waste his or our time by
smiling. "It is not good," he said. "The tumor is well-entrenched. Very
invasive. We can do chemotherapy and some radiation treat
ments, but it is not good. Surgery is a possibility, too." He had a
lilting accent to his voice, and his slender brown fingers waved
slightly as he talked.
"How long?" my dad asked, though his voice was low and
slurred.
"What's it called?" I said.
The doctor blinked at me. "I am not sure I understand."
"The type of cancer he has. It has to have a name."
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JAMES T. McGOWAN
He blinked at me some more, his eyes huge and alert behind his
thick glasses. "Glioblastoma multiforme."
"How. Long." Dad's voice was clearer this time.
"It is impossible to be precise about such matters," Dr. Patel said.
"No one can know with any certainty, but treatment should begin as soon as possible, though, with the stroke, there might be some
delay. I will refer you to Dr. Gleason. A very good oncologist." When Eileen started peppering Dr. Patel with her questions, I
sort of tuned it all out. I kept turning the name over and over in
my mind, Glioblastoma multiforme, Glioblastoma multiforme,
hoping that if I said it enough times and in enough different ways, it would start to make some sense to me. My whole body felt as
though it were bathed in a stinging aura, the same kind of feeling
you get after a helmet-to-helmet tackle. The feeling stayed with me even after Dad went out for the night and the three of us left.
Once outside in St. Joe's parking lot, the
cold air felt terrific, and I unzipped my jacket so I could feel it even more. Eileen looped an
arm in mine and clasped one of Terrance's
hands as we made our way to their car, the
three of us silent, the snow squeaking under
our boots, the distant traffic sounds crisp in
the night air. The blurry blobs ofthe parking lot lights turned the plowed snow a sickly
white, and the strings of Christmas lights that ivied up and down the poles, blinking red, blue, green, rattled hollowly against the
poles in the slight breeze. When we reached
their car, Eileen folded herself into me in a
fierce hug, and I hugged her back just as
fiercely. Terrance stood off to the side, his
fingers stuffed into his back pockets, his head
tilted at the stark stars, his breath coming out
in short, bright bursts of air.
"Jesus Christ," Eileen said, her voice
muffled into my chest. "Of all the
goddamned things." I felt the sting in my eyes, the tears seeping
out and rolling down my cheeks. Eileen, too, started crying. We stayed that way until we
were cried out, Terrance coming over to pat
our backs, wrap his long, lean, hard arms
around us briefly. When Eileen leaned back
from me, she smeared the wetness from my cheeks and then from her own, her hands
very light. "You want to come with us? Back to our
place?"
"No," I said. "No. I better get home." I bent over and gave her a light peck on her fore
head. "I gotta call Mom. Let her know what's
going on."
"I already did. When I went to the bath room while we were still in there," she said,
jerking her head at the hospital, as though it were something that
deserved no better. "She's pretty broken up about it. I told her
you'd probably call later. You could do that from our place." "No," I said. Til call her from home."
I didn't, though. When I got home, once I was actually inside
the house, I wasn't up to doing anything. I drifted from room to
room, snapping on the lights, staring at the stuff inside, trying to
recall my dad doing specific things?powering the vacuum
cleaner back and forth, dusting furniture or mopping the kitchen
floor, shifting a couch here or a chair there, balling up newspaper to get a fire started in the fireplace?but it was all a mishmash of
random images, nothing I could tie them to specifically, my tenth
birthday, say, or the winter night the furnace broke, the day I left
for Lock Haven.
When I got to the kitchen, I got the Jameson's out ofthe pantry and poured myself a good tumbler of it, not even bothering with
KEVIN BERLAND
My life as a pomegranate
Everybody thinks this must be easy?hang around, get red,
get round, get redder still. Look closer: we are making
something, growing into future seasons, for the world
will come to an end when there are no more pomegranates.
Remember, it only took one bite, one little spurt of juice across the tongue, kernel not swallowed but spluttered out on the dark floor, to keep Persephone down in darkness
the best part of the year, and yet it's juice that drives the spring;
its lack brings winter. Without juice, jagged cracks open in the sun-dried earth, birds fall from the sky, apples turn
to dust, rivers give up, turtles wither, trees sink, and people
lie down alone in their narrow beds and do not find rest.
No, wait a minute, that wasn't what I was going to say. Start over.
I say the world is full of juice, which explains its excellent shape:
spherical, like so many ofthe best things, eggs and oranges,
raindrops, cherries, eyes, and pomegranates. Bad things
tend to come in boxes. Misery is edged. You can hurt yourself
knocking your knees and shins on the sharp corners of disappointment as you try to navigate its unlit rooms. Despair is gray. It has a jagged,
spiny surface. Hope is curved, alive and wet inside, and red.
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ice, thinking I'd finish the damn bottle, but as soon as that sweet
heat hit my tongue, my stomach clinched, as though I was going to puke, but I swallowed, wincing and shuddering as I did so, and
the whole time what was going through my mind was, this is bull
shit, just goddamned bullshit. I stared at the inch of whiskey still in the tumbler. To hell with it, I decided and splashed the
remaining whiskey in the sink, shoved the
bottle back in the pantry. I was restless, though. I cleaned the
entire kitchen, floors, walls, counters,
appliances, even the ceiling and the
goddamned windows, and was ready to
start in on the bathrooms when I remem
bered running for freshman football, and
before I knew it, I was out the back door, still in only my sweatshirt and jeans, my thudding boots echoing in the darkness, skidding on the slick streets, my arms pumping as though I were assaulting a heavy bag, and I ran and ran until
my lungs burned from the cold and my legs became jelly, savoring that old delicious exhaustion from going full out. The route I took
was haphazard, but I ended up in front ofthe house, walking in a
small circle as I heaved air in my lungs, my whole body shivering,
sweaty and getting colder, but I stayed that way until my
breathing was almost normal and my heart slowed down. It
wasn't until I started toward the house that I noticed Eileen's car
was in the driveway, and I slowly made my way inside, not really
wanting to see anybody.
The kitchen table had neat piles of paper all over it, and Eileen
had her notebook out. She was bent over and scribbling in it when I came in. She glanced at me as I got a
glass of water, using the
same tumbler as earlier, a hint of the whiskey tainting the water.
"I've been printing stuff off the Internet," Eileen said. "It's a lot
worse than not good.' It's the Black Hole of Calcutta. If I'm
reading this right," and she waved her hands at the piles of paper, "there's nothing they can do. Nothing really."
She started to explain it all, tapping a finger on one pile of
paper, then another, picking up a sheet of paper occasionally and
shaking it at me, her voice quivering in fury that such a thing was
so, but I only sort of listened, mostly just nodded, sipped water.
This is it then, was going through my mind, this is really it. When
she paused to search through a stack for something, I jumped
right in.
"Remember that time Dad got in a fight?" "What?" She stopped searching the pile and shot a look at me,
as though I had asked if she remembered the zombies we kept in
the basement.
"When we were camping at Cape May," I said, "We were just kids, and those two French Canadians?we called them brothers, but nobody knew for sure?they wouldn't turn their music
down, even though it was real late and Dad had talked to them the
two prior nights, and Dad said, 'I'm sick of this shit,' and was out
of our tent stomping toward theirs?"
Her cell phone shrilled, and she snapped it out of its holder,
frowning as she said, "Yeah?"
I finished the water as I watched her face tense.
His good eye kept darting all around the room without
focusing on anything in particular.
"Oh, for Christ's sakes," she said, then, after a pause. "I don't
believe this." She was out of her chair, reaching for her coat, when
she said, "Fine. We'll be at the hospital." I, too, was out of my chair, looking around for my jacket until
I remembered I had tossed it on the living room couch. As she
started to explain, I followed her down the hallway to our front
door, snatching my jacket on the way.
"They found him sprawled out on the
floor of his room. Unconscious. They
wouldn't tell Terrance anything else, but I'm guessing another stroke. All that
crap I read said that's a high possibility.
Multiple strokes."
All the way into Hazleton to get to St.
Joe's, we were quiet, Eileen gripping the
steering wheel with both hands, leaning forward as though it were
hard to see. I mostly stared out my window, the trees and scat
tered houses ghosting by in the bright moonlight. "I remember that fight," she said as we sat at the traffic light
on 22nd Street, at the base of the hill where St. Joe's was at the
top. She didn't look at me, though, just stared out the front
windshield. "Dad pulled up all their stakes so the tent
would collapse on them, and then jumped on top and started
slapping the hell out of them. They kept shouting things in
French."
"It was so crazy, we were all laughing," I said. "Even Mom."
We were silent again until the light turned green. "I forgot my goddamned notebook," Eileen said, gunning the
engine, glaring at me as though I had something to do with that.
"Well, too bad."
Within a day, Dad had his third stroke and his response to stimuli
dropped to about zero. If a nurse or Dr. Patel would slash a probe
across the sole of his foot, it would twitch slightly and that was
about it, or if they talked loudly, directly into his ear, he'd stir and
make some mouth sounds. It took a couple of days until he rallied,
waking up occasionally, with his one good eye shifting warily and
sleepily from one thing to another, saying nothing, refusing to eat.
By that time, there were all kinds of tubes running in and out of
him. When Dr. Patel showed up that day, he brought a woman with
him. She stood slightly behind him, a bunch of folders held against her chest. She was tall and lean, with short salt-and-pepper hair,
and had watchful eyes, the kind that don't miss much.
"Perhaps it is time to place your father in more appropriate
surroundings," Dr. Patel said. He bowed his head slightly toward
the woman. "This is Elise Horlacher. She is in our social services.
She can be of much help." She was. She seemed pleased that we immediately dismissed a
nursing home or some type of long-term care facility, and that's
when she told us she would be our hospice partner. Before the day was out, she helped us arrange with a hospital supply business to
get what we'd need at home for proper hospice care, went over all
the protocols of how things would probably be done, settled on a
time to get Dad home. Afterwards, on her way to dropping me off at the house, Eileen started making noises about moving back in, but I said, no, let's keep things as normal as possible.
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JAMES T. McGOWAN
"What's that, some kind of joke?" she demanded, but neither
then nor later did she move any of her stuff back in the house.
During the whole hospice watch, no matter how much time I
spent in his bedroom or how dutifully I followed the protocols that Elise set up, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had right before
I left Lock Haven, everybody else doing what they had to do and
knowing what it all meant, and me on the outside looking in. Day after day, when I watched over my dad, I mostly did nothing. In
the soft chair I had moved up from our living room, I'd park
myself next to his bed, the hospital-style one we had rented for
him, all shiny chrome and noiseless cranks, and spent a lot of time
watching sunlight and shadows play lightly on the hardwood
floor or across the walls and ceiling, or I'd stare and stare at the
plastic bags and tubes strung on poles that dripped fluids into
him, imagining them being worked over by his body, and then stare at the other tubes connected to calibrated bottles that
emptied them out. I'd have a million thoughts running through my head, but none I could quite grab onto, like a song title or
movie actor whose names stayed just out of reach of memory. He
was almost always in a deep sleep on his back, a comforter tight in his armpits, the activator for the morphine drip clutched in his
bony right hand. His face was all hollows and prominent bones,
looking as though they were anxious to burst free of his skin, his
sparse hair military short.
When I'd find myself looking that closely at him, I tried to
imagine him as someone else and I was just a hospice partner
like Elise was, hoping that if I looked at everything more objec
tively, I could wrap my mind around the whole situation, but
nothing came of that. No matter how hard I tried to will myself to think differently, he remained my dad. Maybe I just don't
have enough imagination. I sort of brought it up one time with
Elise when I was helping her with Dad's bed sores. To prevent them, I mean, or at least delay their onset, as Elise put it. After
we'd rolled him gently onto his right side, Elise stared intently at his pressure points, gently probing around them with her
gloved fingers, before smoothing on the medicated cream that
helped his skin from breaking down. Until she was done, I held
him by his shoulder and hip so he wouldn't roll backwards or
pitch forward, neither of which were likely, but it made me feel useful.
"How many people have you seen die?"
She didn't respond right off, keeping all of her focus on tending to my dad, but I knew she'd heard me by the way her eyebrows shot up when I asked the question. When we were finished with
him, easing him onto his back and tucking the comforter back
under his arms, she stripped off the gloves she wore, dropping them into a wastebasket, then looked at me full on in that clear
eyed way she had that implied anything could be faced if you keep
your wits about you.
"I've seen many people die," she said. "A hundred. Maybe more.
I was a nurse in ICU and CCU for a long time. Before I started
Hospice."
"Is one just kind of like another?" I said. "I mean, after a while, after seeing
so many?"
"No," she said. "Each is unique."
Without quite taking her eyes off me, she reached into an over
sized canvas bag that was braced against the bedside table and
pulled out my dad's chart. The lettering on the side ofthe bag was
bright green, "Hospice?When Caring Matters Most. St. Joseph's
Hospital."
"I don't cry at bedsides. I save that for home. My husband
understands."
"I'm glad you have someone like that," I said. "Really, I am."
Her eyes never shifted from mine in the silence that followed, the unasked question hanging there like a dead bat.
"Eileen's good for me," I said finally. "When she sings, it just kills me."
Which was true. Not long after we started our Hospice watch, Eileen took to singing when she was with Dad. She got the idea
from Mom, who called a lot, checking on Dad's condition, seeing how Eileen and I were holding up, but her questions were always
low-key, her tone more subdued than at any other time I could
remember. One time, though, right in the middle of us talking, she asked me if my dad was awake, and I said yes, and she told me
to put the phone next to his ear.
"Oh, Mom," I said. "I don't know. He won't understand what
you're saying. Words don't mean anything to him, Doc Kraynock said."
"Please, Eddie," she said. "Just hold the phone to his ear."
I felt like a fool, but I did it. By this time, we had begun to
restrain his good arm and leg because he'd lash out a lot if we
didn't, dislodging his tubes and everything. As I brought the
phone close to his head, though, he shied away from it, as if I were holding out a hissing cat, so I kept it a few inches away from his ear, and that's when I heard her singing. It was a song
my father used to sing late at night sometimes when Eileen and I were little kids, after the two of them had been out for an
evening and things were still going good between them.
"Strange things can happen around midnight," he'd croon, his
bulk enveloping my mother as they moved about our kitchen in a made-up dance, with Eileen and me at the kitchen table,
sipping hot chocolate or Moran's Birch Beer, the two of us grin
ning like the village idiots. My father's huge hands spanned the width of my mother's back, and she'd have her head soft on his
chest, her eyes dreamily closed, her thin arms in a loose clasp
around his neck, and she'd croon right back, "Strange things can
happen anytime."
While she sang this time, it didn't take Dad long to become
uninterested in the phone. His good eye kept darting all around
the room without focusing on anything in particular, with that
frightened, puzzled look that was on his face whenever he was
awake and wasn't in pain. When he was in pain, he tensed against his restraints, his face contorting to the right, with subdued wet
sounds coming from his throat. Then his thumb would start in on his morphine activator until he was asleep. He only got one
dose of morphine no matter how many times he pressed it, but his thumb would keep at it until he was unconscious. That's the
kind of stuff that breaks your heart to watch.
When my mom finished up the last chorus, right away I could hear her say, "Eddie? Eddie?" I put the phone back up to my ear.
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"What did he do?" She said. "I mean, did he react in any way? Did he seem to recognize anything?"
"No," I said slowly. "He was pretty much the way he always is."
"Oh," she said, and then it was just static on the phone for a few
seconds. "Oh, well, it was worth a try."
When Eileen came in to relieve me that day, I had already decided I wasn't going to mention
anything about Mom's phone call, but it
didn't matter. Eileen had already talked to
her.
"You know," Eileen said, her eyes all lit
up, bustling about to set up a CD player on Dad's dresser, pulling out CD after CD
from her shoulder bag, and making two
stacks next to the player. "Mom might be on to something. In all that stuff I read, it said that music and
language are centered in different parts of the brain, so, okay, his
language part might be all messed up, but maybe his music part isn't."
She fingernailed down one stack until she double-tapped on
the one she wanted, tugged it out, and put it in the player. Oklahoma. Dad's all-time favorite. All ofthe CD's were Broadway musicals, stuff he used to play incessantly when we were kids?
South Pacific, The King and I, West Side Story, The Music Man,
Camelot, Cabaret, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell?just about every one you could think of. Dad was asleep, but after the
overture, right on cue, Eileen burst out with There's a bright,
golden haze on the meadow, her soprano blending perfectly with
Gordon McCrae's baritone like she was right beside him on her own horse and they'd done this a million times, and she could do
it a million more, with or without him, as long as the sun shined
and that corn kept reaching to the sky. She sang the whole album, and I even found myself humming allong with her at times.
That's what his last days were like. If he were asleep, Eileen would
put in a CD and sing along with it most ofthe time, gliding about
the room, making hand gestures. If Dad were awake, she'd really
get into it, her face taking on all these expressions, her arms
sweeping grandly at times, twirling around. When Terrance was
there, he didn't know the words to most of the songs, but he'd
hum as best he could. And smile. Elise didn't sing or hum, but she
smiled a lot. I smiled. Everybody smiled but Doc Kraynock and
Father Murtaugh when they'd show up. They kept their faces
blank, avoided looking directly at any of us but Dad or shooting a baffled look at Elise. Occasionally, I'd get caught up in the whole
thing, and I'd hear "Gee, Officer Krupke, we're down on our
knees" or "Bali Hai awaits you, where the sun meets the sea"
coming out of my mouth, off-key, more like shouting and
shrieking than anything. Just crazy. None of it seemed to matter
to Dad, though, but every once in a while, the right side of his
mouth turned up in something like a grin, and he'd come out
with these ugly throat sounds, all thick and clotty. Who knows
what got through to him.
On his last day, I was late getting there in the afternoon.
Though it was only early March, winter had broken, and we
I kissed his forehead
again and left the
room, waving vaguely at Elise that she could
go in.
had a lot of unusually warm days, and the calls into the busi ness were starting to pile up. I signed on Grant for the year and had him help with the messages, but you could see he hated it,
wincing every time the phone rang, saying, "Yeah, yeah," and
"Fine. I'll tell him. Yeah, fine," the whole time he talked with someone.
When I got to the house, Elise was in
the kitchen in the last stages of getting Dad's supper ready. Since the Hospice started, I fed him breakfast and supper, Elise covering lunch. Everything was
pureed and put in a compartmentalized tray, a
plastic-coated spoon in a slot on
top. Feeding him with that spoon
depressed me as much as anything.
"What's the lineup tonight?" I said.
"Squash, carrots, apples," Elise said as we left the kitchen.
At the foot of the stairs, she stopped. "Edward," she said. "Your father has not had a good day. Lots of
coughing, and he's been asleep almost the whole day. I don't know how much he'll eat."
All I could think of to do was nod, and that stinging aura
started to sweep through me again. I wasn't sure what I expected once we got in the room, but it was nothing like what I saw. Eileen
was in the soft chair at the foot of the bed, the strain evident in
her face ripping me up, whisper singing, "The Lusty Month of
May." She didn't look our way as we came in, and neither did
Terrance. He was hunkered down beside her, both of her hands
clasped in his, murmuring something to her, but she kept her eyes locked straight ahead, whisper singing the whole time. Dad was
cranked up in his bed, his head lolled to one side, his slack jaw
exposing his withered mouth, his chest not moving. I thought, Jesus, he's dead, and Elise must have thought so, too. Without
looking at me, she headed straight for my father, holding out the
tray behind her until I grabbed it. Reflexively, she straightened out
the cover sheet as she leaned over him. The stethoscope around
her neck swayed away from her, and she stilled it so it hovered over his chest.
"Mr. Faye." Her voice seemed very loud in the room, but I knew
it was no louder than normal. She nudged his shoulder with her
fingers. "Mr. Faye, time for supper."
His eyes remained steadfastly closed, and she nudged him a
little more forcefully. I was tempted to say, Elise, don't, but her
hand spread to cup his entire shoulder, and her voice was soft.
Protruding just slightly from his pajama sleeves, his hands were
nestled in the concave depression that was now his belly, his
useless left hand just ugly. The left side of his face sagged, like a
partially melted rubber mask.
"We have your supper ready, Mr. Faye."
When he cracked his eyes open just a bit and feebly rolled his
head toward her voice, I felt a rush of air leave me and
looked at Eileen. She was staring at me, calm-eyed, her face
composed.
"I need to be outside for a while," she said, and pretty much fled
the room, Terrance right behind her.
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Elise cranked my father a little higher, his head jiggling slightly as she did so. He was a little more alert as Elise secured a bib
around his neck, looking about in puzzled resentment at all the
fuss, as he did when we were alone and I tried to talk with him.
I'd say stuff to him. Dad, remember freshman football and all the
running we did? Or, fly casting is shoulder-elbow-wrist, right? Sometimes, it would just be, Dad, I cannot imagine life without
you, or simply, I love you, Dad. Whenever I talked to him, his look
would linger on me for a few moments, but pretty soon his eyes would start wandering about the room, as if everything were
identifiable but unfamiliar. As he looked at me when I started to
feed him.
"Okay, amigo," I said. "Time to fill your gut." He stared at the spoon as I brought it toward his face, but his
mouth did not really react until I lightly prodded a lip with the
spoon, then his tongue greedily lapped at his food. I constantly had to use the spoon to smooth food off his lower lip, but a
significant amount still spattered his bib. As for Elise herself, she
stationed herself across the bed from me, alert though unobtru
sive. While I continued to feed him, Elise retrieved his chart
from her bag and intermittently scribbled notes on it. It took a
long time to work through the squash and carrots, and when I
started in on the apples, his tongue touched out desultorily, once, twice, and then simply stopped. His eyes were mere slits,
and his jaw was completely slack. Casually, Elise set my father's
chart on the bed and circled my father's right hand with her
own, then slid her fingers up to his wrist. Her other hand lightly touched his neck.
"Perhaps we should wait before feeding him some more," she
said, though she didn't look my way at all.
For long minutes, we remained as we were, Elise's eyes intent on
my father, and I frozen beside the bed. I was afraid if I moved in
any way that something completely unexpected would happen, the windows would implode or the bed collapse in an unbearable
noise. Just as casually as before, Elise eased the earpieces of the
stethoscope in place and disappeared the stethoscope bell beneath the cover sheet, inside my father's pajama top. For the entire time
that Elise listened, I was unaware of any sounds, the tray in my hands, the slight breeze rustling the curtains. My eyes were
completely focused on her hidden hand. When she removed it, she raised her face to me, sliding the stethoscope down around
her neck.
"I'm sorry, Edward," she said. "But your father is gone."
All I could do was nod.
"There are calls I have to make. If you'd rather?"
"No, I'll stay here."
Nodding, she gently took the food tray from me, and I made no
effort to stem the tears.
"Elise," I said. "FU teU Eileen."
"Of course," she said. "I'll be out in the hallway, but just for a
few minutes."
Then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her, and I was left alone with my father. Though the tears did not stop, I was surprised by how suddenly calm I felt, relaxed, serene, as though I were floating in warm seawater, the sun hot on my
skin. I bent down and touched my lips to my father's moist fore
head, swallowed his hands in one of mine. When I let go of his
hands and stepped back enough so I could see him full-length, I
wanted him to look different somehow, that there would be some
indication that everything had changed, but he looked much as
he had while sleeping these last few weeks. A movement by the
windows drew my eyes away. The voile panels puffed then
collapsed until sucked onto the screen, an elegant deflation that
reminded me of the waves receding from the rocks at Cape May, where my father slapped at those French Canadian brothers
trapped beneath their collapsed tent. I kissed his forehead again and left the room, waving vaguely at Elise that she could go in. She
nodded and stepped quietly into the room.
All the way down the steps, the stairs creaking pistol sharp, I kept reciting a list in my head. Call Mom. Let Grant know
I won't be in for a few days. Set up a meeting with Maxie Fellin, our lawyer. Call Father Murtaugh. Let Doc Kraynock know. Call
Boyle's Funeral Home. You should have written it down, a voice in my head insisted. Why didn't you just write the damn
list down? When I reached the front entrance, I hesitated at the door,
savoring for a moment the rich green smell a breeze carried
through the screen door, trying to spot where Eileen was.
She was looking over the hedge that separated our yard from
the one next door, arm in arm with Terrance, her head nestled
against his shoulder. A gaggle of voices lured me outside. I eased out the screen door so the hinges wouldn't squeak and stepped to the edge of the porch. A small group of
children were having a picnic in the front yard on the far side
of the hedge, and all but one had their hands hovering
protectively over their small plates of food. The one who didn't was standing, imperiously pointing at her backyard, her voice clear as clear, "Go, Elliot. Now." But the dog,
a mutt, ignored
her, romping about excitedly as though he were a part of the
meal. The breeze swayed the limbs of our maple trees slightly my way, and an Absopure man hustled two five-gallon water
jugs up the driveway of the house opposite ours. A teenage girl
juggled a soccer ball?right thigh, left thigh, instep?as she
made her way down the sidewalk across the way. Cars darted
by, and a cloud drifted across the sun. How big the world is flitted through my mind, and as I risked my first step down, I
boomed out, "Eileen!" The dog stopped in a mid-spin, and the kids wrenched their faces at me, Terrance and Eileen, too, and
something in my voice, the tone or volume, or the way my arms
were spread wide, how I quick-stepped down to the cement
told her everything. She pulled away from Terrance, breaking into a full sprint almost from the first step, her arms also spread
wide, her face crumbling as she ran, Terrance jogging after her, his arms pumping loosely, his hands jangling, his tongue
tasting his upper lip. Behind me, the house loomed, large and
silent. I shut everything out but Eileen, wanting nothing more
than to have her lithe arms tight around my neck, and then
they were, and I stayed bent over, rocking her gently as we
hugged, her sobs loud in my ear, and then my voice, deflated, muffled in her neck, "Oh, Eileen."
November-December 2006 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 19
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