The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

"Me n' Andy"

Barbara J. Bache-Wiig
jorwig@execpc.com

   I’d really like to tell you about this friend of mine. It’s weird. But before I tell you about him, I’ve got to tell you about our old group in high school. I figure that way you’ll get more of a feel for this friend of mine.

   There were five of us in the old group. We all graduated from high school about three and a half years ago. We had this group when we were in school. What a group! David played trumpet and trombone; another guy, Hal, played the drums; Scott, well, he played guitar and me, I played, or tried to play, my dad’s old saxophone. My friend that I’m gonna tell you about, Andy, well, he was our arranger and singer. Could that guy sing! His voice would make all the girls go wild. Anyway, we had a helluva good time together most of the time. Once in awhile we’d maybe want to ditch somebody because he didn’t come to rehearsal, but we’d always make it back together again.

   In high school we were all in stage band together and had this human being for an instructor. His name was Jacob Groh. He was something else—always helping everybody, giving every student, with talent or no talent, a chance. He was a short skinny guy with a little mustache, a goatee, glasses that slipped down his nose, and wrinkles. He made us work till we made the sounds he wanted. Then when we did, he’d grin and say, “ya-got-it, ya-got-it,” and maybe kind’a shove the kid closest to him. It’d make us feel smart as hell.

   In the beginning, when I was straining to get into the stage band, I had no talent, but I had persistence you could pour if you tipped me upside down. Good old Groh took me aside one day and said, “Joey, what’re we going to do with you? I don’t think you could play ‘Come to Jesus’ in the key of C.” He wasn’t being snotty. He was just stating facts. I told him that my buddies were all in Band, that I liked music plus having this old sax of my dad’s and could I please stay if I worked real hard? He looked at me so long and deep that I felt as if I grew an inch. Then he pulled at his goatee and said he guessed even if I didn’t have an eye or an ear for music, I still had the heart for it, so I could stay.

   Things changed after we got out of high school. We didn’t see Mr. Groh any more, and our group of five guys scattered, all doing different things, but we keep in touch.

   Hal, the drummer, he plays around the state with a group, and he’s in, what you might call, the drug scene. I don’t know what all he’s tried, but I guess he likes to blow his mind and feel cool on the drums.

   Then Scott, well, all I can say about him is that he thinks he’s the best of the red hot lovers. I guess you could put it that he’s big on the sex scene. You won’t believe this but that guy got so horny one night on his cycle driving along next to a cute chick in a VW that he signaled her to meet him at the next rest area. Well, you guessed it, they went at it right there in the rest area, then he had her follow him to a bar in the next town. He was bragging to me about it later, and I figured that guy was out of his skull.

   David was one of us, and well, we always called him “Arrow,” because he’s so straight. He’s regular, but does he get around. He goes to one of those colleges where they take trips once a year, so he’s been to Russia, he’s been to the Scandinavian countries, and a month ago he played with an orchestra in Vienna. Being the big thinker--I’m into the think scene, I guess, because I’m going to our local college and getting high on philosophy, psychology, and American Lit. and working my way taking pictures for the public relations department. And y’know I can’t help but wonder if maybe it pays off to be straight and regular. David’s got a steady girl, and would you believe it, he keeps it all private, I mean, what they do and what they say. Now that takes a guy like Arrow.

   Then there’s this friend that I started to tell you about and what’s going on with him. Well, Andy was the singer and arranger in the group, like I already told you. That guy could really sing. When we were in high school a cappella, he got most of the tenor solos. His voice reached out to people in such a cool way that I would watch them sit, not moving, not breathing, just waiting for Andy’s next note. That was the way he sang serious music. He was in a quartet too, and then he’d make his voice come out sexy--don’t ask me how! He had the lead in the musical we gave in our senior year, and I got the feeling that he could be big in TV some day. Mr. Groh told him he had this great talent for harmony and counterpoint and all, but Andy wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his music, or with his life. ‘Course which one of us did, and how could we with the draft hanging over us and the goddamn war? We all sweated it out in various ways, though, till no more draft.

   Our group used to practice in Andy’s basement. We were loud, but Andy’s parents would just close the door and go on about their business and then compliment us all over the place when we came up. His mother would always have cookies or chips and soda for us and she and Andy’s dad didn’t warn us about spilling crumbs on the carpeting or breaking the chairs or anything. They didn’t even complain about our long hair and crummy blue jeans. I could actually feel them liking us--hair, noise, fights and all. The rest of our parents didn’t want us to practice in our homes because of the noise, plus they were scared we might mess up their magazine-picture houses.

   Now, three and a half years out of high school, Andy is right in the middle of what I have to call the death scene. Not that he’s dying. Well, that is, his body isn’t dying, but I don’t know what’s happening to him. The thing is, Andy’s mother is dying. She has cancer. But she has guts. She’s been willing to be a human guinea pig, you might say. She takes any of the new drugs they discover, and so far she has stayed alive, if you could call it that. She’s probably making a great contribution to medical science and all. I can’t help but admire her, but Jeez, I keep thinking, what’s it doing to Andy?

   First, they chopped off a breast to get rid of the cancer. Then they burned her with cobalt till now she’s got an open sore all down her back that oozes and hurts and burns all the time. Some of the medicine she takes—it’s poison, you know—makes her puke and retch. And through all this she manages somehow. She reads, knits, watches TV, and clings to the latest lifeline her doctor has thrown her. Some days Andy says she’s happy, thinking she’s cured, and maybe the next day she’s miserable because she knows she’s not. She’s really being murdered by this cancer, sort of by inches—no, by millimeters, and it’s enough to make you feel like life is shit to see Andy shrivel and his mother lie dying. She’s been almost dead maybe fifteen times in the last two years. I mean she’s dying, like almost every breath may be her last, and every move is agony. Andy’s begun to eat only hamburgers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He watches TV day and night, or listens to his stereo in between doing anything his mother or dad ask him to do. He buys groceries, takes letters to the post office, and takes his mother to the lab for blood tests. He dusts and vacuums all over the place, he does some of the cooking, and he washes the dishes. I’ve watched him do the stuff—even helped him—but I can tell his mind isn’t on the job, and if you say anything to him he answers in one or two words. He seems tied up like a mummy, or like he’s one of those tops that you wind a string around and then let go, only with him the string never quite lets go. It’s as if he figures that it wouldn’t do any good to decide anything, or try anything because he’ll just be wound up and let go again and wound up and let go again.

   Andy started college when Arrow and I did. His mother was still well enough so she wasn’t in bed all the time. Andy did OK too, but he didn’t like college. Here he’s got all this musical talent and this voice that would make even God notice it, yet the way he started talking after his mother got sick, you’d think he was lower than a worm. Plus, I found out that he began expecting anything he tried would turn out lousy. Have you ever known anybody like that? No matter how much fun something might be, or how interesting, they’re sure, they know, that it’s gonna turn out wrong. And then it usually does. That was Andy. So anyway, with Andy not liking college and being the youngest kid in his family, he landed the job of sort of babysitting his mother, you might say.

   You’ll probably say, “That’s life for you.” Well, I’ll say, “That’s death for you,” because on top of all I’ve told you, Andy’s dad had a heart attack a year ago. It scared Andy, naturally, and his mom and dad. But his dad was great, just like his mother. He recovered and has kind of hypnotized himself into not getting upset about all the work and the bills. He takes everything in stride—”a minute at a time” he says. Now he goes to work again every day after getting Andy’s mother settled, and Andy stays at home like I said and takes care of her. Well, right in the middle of all this dying, I read one night in the paper that Mr. Groh, our old band teacher, had died of a sudden stroke. He wiped out at school, but I heard later that his wife got to the hospital about the same time he got there in the ambulance. She got to see him, and he saw her. Then, clunk, he was gone.

   There was a memorial service for him at our old school a couple of days later. Andy and I and the other guys all went to the service together. The program read, “A Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication Honoring the Life and Work of Jacob Groh.” There was some organ music and a prayer, and Mr. Groh’s a cappella choir sang. I wasn’t thinking about Mr. Groh for a while. I was thinking about a picture. D’you know that book of photographs called The Family of Man? D’you remember the picture with the doctor holding up a newborn baby by the ankles? The baby is all slippery and wet, and the cord is still connected to the mother. Above the picture it says, “The universe resounds with the joyful cry I AM!” And that’s what I was thinking about while the choir sang.

   When the choir finished, our principal got up and told about Mr. Groh’s life. It was a long one—he was 64 when he died—and packed with playing a lot of instruments in big name bands and orchestras, then teaching music to a lot of kids, and generally being fascinated with living and caring whether his students learned. Hearing about him kept me thinking about the universe resounding with the cry, “I AM.”

   Talk about resounding, after our principal finished speaking, the kids in this year’s stage band played their hearts out in a jazz number that made the place vibrate. All of a sudden I’m thinking, “The universe resounds with the triumphant yell, “I WAS!” Then while my feet kept the beat of the jazz, tears poured out of my eyes, and I got this feeling in my gut like I’m gonna laugh because I can hear Mr. Groh saying, “Joey, you couldn’t play ‘Come to Jesus’ in the key of C.”

   Andy and I and the other guys all went to the service together, like I said. As we walked out, even though I was still pretty choked up but sort of feeling cheerful too, I said to Andy, “That was some service for a really great guy, y’know?” Sounding like he was choking in a thick fog, he said, “It was all right.”

   And just like that I’m jerked back to him and his death scene, and I realized how numb and strung out he is. I remembered one time when Andy told me that he felt strung up and that even though he figured he might as well kill himself since he’ll die of cancer or a heart attack anyway, he didn’t have the energy. As we walked I looked at Andy and he looked as if he’s being drained down through smaller and smaller funnels, and he’s coming out stringier every time his mother almost dies but doesn’t.

   Then I remembered the memorial service. It was straight—like our friend Arrow. Even though life had knocked him dead, Mr. Groh left in a sort of throbbing glory. But, poor Andy, when his mother finally dies, I guess the universe will only echo with a muffled sigh, “at last.”

Published: October 11, 2004