All the Ways the World Can End Read online

  “Hey,” said Julian. “Water your thirsty sprout, will ya?” He took Marty’s twig, pretended to pick his nose with it, and then handed it to me for good luck.

  Humpty Dumpty

  One day, all the king’s (or queen’s) horses and all their wo/men won’t be able to put this Earth together again.

  A brief yet terrifying chart of the most

  devastating earthquakes since 1900

  According to my earthquake tracker, there are about 50 earthquakes recorded daily. There is probably one happening right now in the Aleutian Islands or somewhere in California.

  Chapter 4

  CHECKING IT OUT

  I tried to open the front door quietly, in case Dad was still napping. He wasn’t. He was standing in the middle of the living room like he’d just lost something and didn’t know where to look for it. His pajama bottoms were so loose that he was clutching the waistband, and on top he had on a horrible tan fleece jacket with Siegfried and Roy stitched into the back. Mom had brought it back from some law convention in Vegas.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. Not the nicest way to greet him, but I liked to face fear with misplaced anger.

  “I’m not … sure,” Dad answered with a lopsided smile. I could tell he really didn’t want to be standing there, saying those words, feeling that shitty, smelling even shittier. He backed his way onto the couch. I hated our couch. It had too many colors chasing each other in a trippy paisley pattern and the pillows had no fluff left inside. When Dad sank down, the front of his jacket opened just enough for me to see a tide of red creeping across his chest. It had streaks that radiated out like fiery tentacles.

  “That looks worse,” I said, pointing. “Is it?”

  Dad couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. I got him to stick a thermometer under his tongue. The first time it read 97. Then it read 102.

  “Do we know what time Mom might be home?” I didn’t even wait for him to try to answer that question. No one could answer that question, which was why this whole thing was so infuriating. Sometimes I felt like Mom was giving us all cancer of uncertainty.

  “I saw she called,” Dad said. “But I was in the bathroom.” Which could mean two thousand different things involving his tubes and bowels and I wasn’t going to make him elaborate. “I missed a call from Emma too.”

  “Emma my sister?” I asked.

  “That’s the only one I know,” Dad answered.

  “Whoa. Was it a drunk dial?”

  “C’mon, Len. Play nice. She misses you.”

  “I’ll call her back while I look for some Tylenol,” I said. “Just stay here please.” As if he had anywhere else to go or any energy to get there.

  I knew calling Emma was not going to be helpful, but I didn’t have a better idea. She usually only called home to tell me how messed up she got or how consumed she was with Walt Whitman and hashish and some guy in her chem lab named Manuel. I was enraged with her for leaving when our family was in crisis mode. To be honest, I was also incredibly envious. Emma had this amazing ability to jump into everything—puddles, people, languages—and leave her worries on a crumpled tissue for someone else to clean up. I didn’t even think I’d finished dialing all her digits when she picked up, panting.

  “Aha!” she yelled into the phone. “My little sister will be the tiebreaker. Lenny, don’t think, just answer: Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber?”

  “Jonas Brothers,” I said. “But what’s the question?”

  “Who’s the first male singer you ever masturbated to. Duh!”

  I couldn’t decide if I was disgusted or excited by that question. I just knew I missed how we used to be small and have nothing to do but make up guessing games and pose on the living room floor with pretzel-rod cigarettes, pretending we were French cabaret singers. I spoke as quietly as I could, considering she was blasting some boy band that needed to be annihilated. I told her about flushing Dad’s port and the red skin making a tarantula across his chest. She didn’t say anything.

  “Are you there?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m here,” she answered.

  “Well? What do you think? Did I give him an infection?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. But where the fuck is Mom?”

  “Court,” I said, enjoying Emma’s outrage. Until it became all about her again.

  “She was supposed to send me my black stirrup pants and her flowered shower cap for eighties night. Did I tell you I’m going as trickle-down economics and my new bestie Nicola’s got an awesome Maggie Thatcher wig? Come in! You guys are cray-zeeeeee!”

  Now it sounded like a small mob of Emma’s friends had come into her dorm room to practice dolphin noises. I wanted to strangle Emma over the phone.

  “I’ll make sure to FedEx you from the ICU,” I barked, about to hang up.

  “Wait! What?” she asked.

  “Emma, I need help!” I’d never spoken that clearly or desperately before. But I didn’t know how else to get through the commotion. I needed somebody to be in charge besides me. It felt like there were pins and needles in my tongue while I waited for Emma to answer. I heard her tell several people to shut up and let her into the closet. Then she put on her Serious Big Sister voice.

  “I’m sorry, Lennyboo. I really am. I love you so much and everything is going to be fine. What if I called Dr. Lowenfeld? He’s the chief of everything cancer, right?”

  “Lowenstein. He’s doing a presentation in Toronto,” I told her.

  “Doesn’t he have someone filling in? I’ll just call and see who—”

  I cut her off. “It’s okay. I’ll handle it.” The thought of Emma contacting Dr. Ganesh sent a thunderbolt of terror through me. Not only was Emma loud and unafraid, she’d gotten all the pretty genes in the family—a nice rack, full lips, and honey-colored hair that was so wavy and soft I used to beg her to let me brush it before bed. Just for comparison, I used to ask Mom repeatedly if she’d had an affair with a poodle, because my frizz was so out of control. I could see Emma and Dr. Ganesh making out together in a medical supply closet without even closing my eyes.

  “In fact, that’s a great idea. I’m gonna call whoever’s filling in right now,” I declared.

  “I am totally here if you need anything,” Emma said.

  “Me too. Gotta go love you bye!”

  I stared at my phone for a solid minute, rehearsing my opening lines:

  Hi, Dr. Ganesh, you might not remember me …

  Hey Dr. G, ’member me?

  DRG! It’s ER-H! Wassup?

  I decided I had to catch my breath first. And clean up this mess. While Emma was blathering, I’d taken out everything in the corner cabinet of our kitchen, looking for the Tylenol. Mom had a lazy Susan in there that was too lazy to spin anymore and on it were five different kinds of paprika, three half-moons of garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, antihistamines, blood thinners, and calcium chews. There were medications in there dating back to when I was a baby and took some thick yellow syrup for an earache. Asthma, eczema, high blood pressure, anemia, insomnia. We could cure a nation of minor illnesses in that one cabinet. But of course, no Tylenol in sight.

  I was so angry and scared and angry again. I wanted to throw everything against the kitchen window and make the glass or the earth or at least this day crack open and let us all out. It felt like nothing fit together and I had to make some sense or order of all these misplaced pieces.

  First, I tossed everything that was outdated or smelled funky. I also dismantled the too-lazy Susan, sprayed down the empty cabinet, and chipped off the vitamins that had melted into the corner. Next I put the pills on one side and the spices on the other and crafted a little divider out of the back of an empty box of Girl Scout cookies. At least, I thought it was empty. Until three Thin Mints from the turn of the century with a green coat of mold fell on the floor and I thought it was a flying squirrel so I instinctually yelped and stomped on them. Then I poured Clorox into a bucket and wiped down every flat surface in the kitchen and
dining room until I heard Dad calling from the living room.

  “Just a sec!” I croaked. The bleach fumes clawed at my throat, which I actually liked. It felt like a protective shield covering my heart and lungs and all the words I wanted to say, especially when I came in to see Dad red-faced and panty on the couch.

  “Just wondering if you found that Tylenol,” he said. His teeth were chattering.

  A simple request. I had found the bottle of Tylenol almost twenty minutes ago and had promptly filed it alphabetically on the “pill side” of the kitchen cabinet, forgetting to bring it to him first.

  “So sorry,” I said pitifully. “I’m … yes.” I ran back to the kitchen and wasted more of my dad’s precious minutes trying to get the water filter to work before filling up his cup from the faucet and handing him the pills. I could see them slip down his neck. He was so thin and empty.

  “Emma said what about calling the attending resident,” I said, pretending confusion. “Dr. Gernish?”

  “Ganesh,” corrected Dad. “That’s a good idea.”

  Radhakrishnan Ganesh, 917-555-0198. Radhakrishnan Ganesh, 917-555-0198. Not that I hadn’t memorized his number and repeated it under my breath every day since he gave me his card. I’d even devised one of my nerdy number games with his cell: Nine plus one minus seven is three. Plus five-five-five is eighteen. Which is equal to zero plus one plus nine plus eight.

  Dr. Ganesh’s message was short and formal. Mine was not.

  “Hi, this is Eleanor Rosenthal-Hermann, Jeremy Rosenthal-Hermann’s daughter. Also Naomi’s, but I guess you know that or don’t need to, but anyway. I was wondering. There’s a lot of redness around my father’s chest catheter. It didn’t just happen. I mean, I was flushing it with saline and now it looks really red and I’m pretty sure he has a fever even though I’m not great with thermometers. This is a little hard to follow, sorry. Maybe we should just come in to the clinic? But I’m not sure if there are walk-in hours or if we should—”

  It’s always humbling to get cut off by a voice-mail robot.

  “Left a message,” I reported back to Dad. “We could also just go in if you want. I don’t know if you really want to just show up at the clinic though, right?”

  I meant that as a rhetorical question, but Dad nodded. I just stared at him, unmoving. He wasn’t supposed to agree. He was the one who made this all bearable or steady in some small way. If Jeremy Rosenthal-Hermann needed help, then the whole world needed help. And by the whole world I meant the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets (including poor Pluto). All the galaxies we hadn’t even discovered yet. Maybe a side effect of Dad’s new nocturnal awareness was hearing that silent warning of sudden vacuum decay or the seismic shifts bubbling up from Earth’s core.

  “Len, it’s okay,” Dad said softly. Whatever superpowers he’d acquired, he still had a radar for when I got yanked into my end-of-the-world fantasies. He sniffed my anxieties before I could even name them—he always had. Starting with that ride home from the planetarium seven years ago. I had felt his eyes on me, softly studying me like they did now.

  “We’re just checking it out,” he said. “Get me some socks, will ya?”

  “Yup. Yes. Just checking it out,” I repeated numbly.

  I’d never opened Dad’s sock drawer before. I really hoped it wasn’t full of old Hustler magazines, or worse, nudies of Mom in just her judge’s robes. I reached in quickly, retrieving some brown argyles. The only things in there besides socks were a campaign pin for Walter Mondale and a flattened penny we made together at my school carnival when I graduated fifth grade. I felt so honored he’d kept that. I wanted to know what else he’d squirreled away.

  But there would be plenty of time to go through all of Dad’s stuff later. Maybe I’d carry that flattened penny in my pocket to his funeral. I saw myself walking slowly in a shapeless black dress, pressing the penny between my palm and thigh. Which couldn’t come true.

  “Stop! I don’t even have a black dress with pockets,” I told the Mondale pin. I slammed the drawer and shut myself in the bathroom. I washed my hands and said, “I love you, Daddy; I’m sorry, Daddy,” twenty-five times to get rid of everything else in my head except here and now.

  “Don’t be an asshead,” I spit at the wimpy kid with two new chin pimples staring back in the mirror. Then I washed my hands again until they stung and flicked the water into my face, running down the stairs to give Dad his socks. His feet were sticking out of his oversize sweatpants, the skin so translucent that I could see his veins snaking around the toes. And a small button of green pumping up and down. His pulse.

  Mom had the hatchback, so we took the Jolly Roger—our fifteen-year-old station wagon that was due for retirement. Jolly had streaks of crimson along the backseat, which looked like a murder scene, but it was just from when Emma and I were playing beauty parlor with five shades of red nail polish. Jolly also had a pair of Groucho glasses that lived on the rearview mirror, a billowy canopy instead of an upholstered roof, and a radio that only got some AM sports station. It took a long time to get Dad in a semicomfortable position in the passenger seat, even though I’d brought his special doughnut-shaped pillow to sit on and a blanket from the couch since he couldn’t stop shivering.

  I put on the Groucho glasses for the ride too, because maybe they had a little magic left in their wobbly frames. I’d worn them to Dad’s first chemo trip and he said it was the reason he didn’t get queasy or have any bad side effects. The left eyebrow was missing and the plastic nose smelled like a gym locker room, but the mustache was still bushy enough for a laugh. I’d do anything to make this less harrowing for both of us. Plus, at least it wasn’t me staring back in the rearview mirror.

  I texted Julian before pulling out of the driveway.

  Heading into the city with Dad. Wanna come?

  He wrote back: Sorry, knee-deep in lumberyard. Everything ok?

  Hope so. Fever.

  Then I erased that because it looked like I was hoping for a fever. I tried:

  Fever. Hope so.

  Which made no sense grammatically and could be easily misinterpreted. So I settled on just:

  Fever.

  It didn’t tell the whole story, but at this point I had no idea what the story was and I didn’t know how to ask for help and, most of all, my dad was just waiting in the passenger seat while I rewrote texts.

  “Okeydokey pokey,” I said, gunning the engine a little.

  “Woo-hoo,” answered Dad.

  Dr. Ganesh’s office was about a forty-five-minute drive away—without traffic. It was nestled in “cancer row”—which is what Dad called all the research hospitals on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I knew this area of New York City much better than I wanted to, thanks to Dad’s dozen hospital stays in the past year.

  “Can you believe we’re still over there?” Dad asked, cutting into my daymare. He nodded at the radio. Apparently, a quarterback from the Buffalo Bills was dedicating his last win to the troops in Afghanistan.

  “Unbelievable,” I said, coughing out a piece of loose mustache and almost rear-ending the cab in front of us. Everyone in the tristate area had decided to go into Manhattan that Friday afternoon, so the crawl down the FDR Drive was taking more like an hour and a half. I kept trying to get off at earlier exits and wind my way through the city, but that just made the trip even slower and filled with angry pedestrians. Obviously nobody else had gotten the memo that we were possibly heading toward a galactic shutdown or that my dad was bleeding out from my morning syringe stabbing. Even the parking garage was backed up.

  I’d forgotten about how we’d have to go through Dr. Ganesh’s lovely but long-winded receptionist, Linda. Linda looked a little like the Pillsbury Doughboy and had sweaters that told stories in yarn. Today she had on a village with snowflakes and a dog howling at the moon. Linda moved slower than a slug on Xanax, and she liked to call everyone darling. As in:

  “Oh hello, darling. I’m so sorry, Dr. Ganesh is done for the
day.”

  “I know. But my dad isn’t feeling well, so we thought maybe he could just take a look.”

  “He might have some openings—”

  “We can’t wait for openings!” I cut her off. Dad cleared his throat to let me know I needed to dial it back.

  Linda looked at me as if I’d just slapped her. “If you’re needing immediate assistance, the ER is just around the corner on First Ave.”

  “We don’t know what we need.” I tried to keep my voice at a lower octave. “We need to see Dr. Ganesh because he’s familiar with the situation and he knows—”

  “Ey-leah-nor!” Dr. Ganesh came through some secret door behind Linda, smelling like sandalwood aftershave and hope. “I just was hearing your message. This is so good you came.”

  He brought us into a putty-colored room in the back that had dim lights, an electric teakettle, and a desk with a framed portrait of what must have been Mr. and Mrs. Ganesh—gray-haired versions of his angular face. Three medical diplomas hung neatly above.

  “Thank you so much for seeing us, Dr. Ganesh,” said my dad.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at Linda. And I know you’re very busy,” I explained. “Can you just look at my dad’s chest? Is it okay? I mean, I know it’s not, but how not okay is it?”

  “Please, just relax. You too, Ey-leah-nor. It is so much nicer if we can relax.”

  It was nicer. Blinding white teeth and his scruff of beard helped too. Actually, everything felt calmer in here. Dr. Ganesh would hold up the sky, or at least clear some stretch of the horizon so we could breathe again.

  “Please sit,” Dr. Ganesh said, taking Dad’s hand and leading him to a cushioned chair. “Tell me what is happening.”

  “Well.” Dad sighed. “I’m not exactly sure. I’m so sorry to bug you like this.”

  “No sorry,” Dr. Ganesh said. He took my hand and led me to the chair next to Dad. His palm was so warm and sturdy. I willed myself to let go even though I wanted to stay connected to him until the world ended. Which it could at any moment. Maybe I could ask him for his opinion on designer pathogens or he could give me the access code for the medical journal archives I’d found online. I could buy him coffee or meet him at one of those Irish pubs by the subway and talk about the evolution or de-evolution of gene manipulation. Maybe cap the night off with bubble tea and karaoke…?