The Closet Monster

or Never Fear, by Dog

Most of the time, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. The thing is usually not much more than an inanimate object. Right now, for instance, it seems to be sleeping in a corner of the hall closet, minding its own business, not making a sound. Of course, it is evening now, and the thing has never been known to stir at night, but even in the daytime, as long as the closet door is closed and it keeps to the shadows, it maintains a harmless peace that even a dutiful watchdog might begin to accept.

But don’t be alarmed, my two-legged friends, for you have not only a dutiful dog but a wise one, who knows a deceptive calm when he sees one. I don’t mean to scare you, but there is a beast in our house, a savage monster behind that closet door, with a spine-chilling howl and armor-plated skin and hidden teeth. But rest assured, good people, you shall not be bothered. I am your guard dog, and I am keen to the monster’s ways. If that closet door cracks open even the slightest bit, I’ll perk up my eyes and ears. If the monster wakes, I promise to let you know. And if it dares to emerge from its shadows, never fear, people, I will be on my feet even before the demon lets out its first hair-raising screech. I will not allow it to take over the house. I will scare it back into the closet, so that all of you may stay safe and sound this evening. That is my job, after all, and I intend, as always, to do it right. 

Perhaps some of you aren’t even aware of the monster’s existence. I’m not surprised. The animal rarely comes out when everyone is home, largely due, I’m sure, to my persistent guarding. Right now, for instance, I do not allow it to intrude on you while you’re all eating your dinner, or later when you look at your television, or after that when you’ve fallen asleep. I am doubly alert with the whole family around, and in times like these the monster stays put, probably because it knows better. 

Likewise, the beast seems to have enough sense to keep to the shadows when no one is around —no one, that is, but me. It knows, I believe, that without the restraint that looking out for your safety puts on me, I would tear out its very heart. I swear, by dog, I would have no tolerance. In fact, more than once on those solitary days, I’ve thought of busting the door down and attacking the monster in cold blood, while it sleeps. Even now that is an appealing thought.

But don’t be concerned, people, I am hardly a beast myself. I will control my temper, for your sake, even if just one of you is in the house. 

It is precisely those times, however, that the creature always seems to wait for. It’s as if it knows that I’m not the brutal savage then that I would be in an empty house, nor the alert guard, as I’m trying to be right now, with the house full. I guess it thinks that with just one or two people home, I’m not as much on my toes. And so it has been, I confess. In the winter afternoons, for instance, like the one we had today, the sun looks so inviting as it shines on the living room carpet. And from time to time, I’m sorry to say, I lapse from my basic duties, in favor of that carpet, giving the enemy more opportunity than it deserves. 

Usually only one of you is around. Maybe you’re in the kitchen, playing with dishes, or walking around the house rubbing windows. I glance at the hall closet and see it closed. I peek in the kitchen and see you safe, and —just for a while, mind you —I stretch out and catch my breath, and I relax my guard. Oh, but forgive me, gentle people, for being less than diligent. Forgive me for thinking too much of myself. For it is in just this setting, me stretched out on the floor and you roaming unprotected through the house, that the creature suddenly roars. I jump up and run for the closet, but it is too late. You are no longer in the kitchen, playing with dishes, but in the hallway, gripping tightly at the monster’s neck. Oh, what a sorry dog I am! If only I had been lying against that door to keep, or if only I had not been lying down at all, then you would never have been involved. 

But the sly beast had waited for this opportunity. And what can I do now? As the battle gets under way, you have its neck, and I can only be ready on the side in case you lose your grip. Oh, how I wish that it could be me who has the throat-hold. By dog, I would rip that neck in two.

As it is, though, I can’t do much more than cheer you on. I try to bark louder than the beast, but the beast is deafening, and has incredible endurance. I try to keep the beast at bay, but it is a very clever creature and cunningly expands the battlefield, pulling you slowly from one room to the next. I try to bite the beast, but it is a thick-skinned animal, impervious to my attacks. Only its neck appears to be vulnerable, and that is in your clutches. As you whip it here and there, I can only encourage you to tighten your hold. Of course I suggest, now and then, that maybe you ought to turn its pitiful neck over to me.

But I can see that you’re afraid. You start speaking to me, perhaps asking me how and when you should let go of its neck. But because of the monster’s terrible screaming, I can’t make out exactly what you’re saying, and you don’t seem to hear my reply.

The battle goes on, throughout the entire house. We move into the living room, and the animal spends an extra amount of time right over the area of carpet where I had been sprawled out on moments before. This really steams me, and I start barking even louder. You seem to apply more pressure on your strangle-hold, and yet the monster continues to roar. It could be, I consider, that the neck is thicker than I thought. But I keep barking back at the beast, hoping always that I might at least frighten it back into its shadows. 

We wrestle through every room of the house, and then suddenly, even as my barks are starting to crack, the roaring stops. The animal’s endurance has proven to be less than mine, and I keep on barking, triumphantly, as you drag the silent body back to the closet and firmly close the door.

It is evening, and you are all in the house again. I always notice on nights like this that one of you —the recent warrior, I mean —never wants to say anything about the incident. I understand. You’re still a little shaky, or maybe you don’t want to concern the others. Maybe you know as well as I do that the beast isn’t dead yet. Well, rest assured. The next time I get a chance, I swear, I’m going to bust in and kill that thing for good. In the mean time, never fear, eat your dinner in peace, and enjoy complete safety. Your guard dog is on patrol. My ears are tuned to the closet door, and I will sense the slightest movement in the hallway. I will protect you from the evil monster of the shadows, and you fine people may continue your peaceful meal without any interruption.

But say, I sure would appreciate it if you would put a plate of food aside for me.


English 201, 3/5/90, Prof. Lavin

Josh's Cancer

Squirrels

Squirrels chewed a hole in the wall of my brother’s room: the east wall, right next to the bed. After years of hearing them scurrying around in the attic, and of thinking their actions harmless, these cousins of rats found a way into the wall, and shortly thereafter, a way out. My father put poison by the hole, and in a few days the box was empty and the squirrels —we hoped —had disappeared back into the wall, back up to the attic and maybe even out of the house where they could die without raising too much of a stink.

Josh, my brother, was not home for this. If he had been, it wouldn’t have bothered him, he says. He would have slept next to the hole, as if to prove something. As it was, he was the one to point out that no one had actually seen any squirrels in the house. “I bet you you’ve been fooled all along,” he said. “I bet you they were rats.” Josh was in school, several miles away.

But the squirrels, or whatever they were, finally busted in. Just a crack was all they needed to get started, and in no time —one, two days —they had a hole big enough to caravan a whole family through. We had heard them scuttling behind the plaster for at least as long as we’ve owned this house —fourteen years that would be, which in squirrel generations is practically forever. Then, suddenly, they were in and out of the room. Dad put some D-Con by their new doorway, and they ate that up and started chewing on the cardboard box. And the hole in the wall got bigger. “But D-Con,” explained Dad, “will eventually make them go off and die somewhere. “Won’t they start smelling?” I asked. “No,” said Dad. “They just go off somewhere.”

Next the birds found their way in. They must have had to go through the squirrel tunnel to get to the hole, which doesn’t seem like a birdlike thing to do, but anyway they did it. Mom opened up the door one day and literally scared the shit out of them, two big crows. She was pretty scared too, but the birds were going nuts, banging themselves against the windows and flying all around the room like the floor was on fire. Mom tried to gather up courage to walk across the room to open the window, but the birds didn’t want to allow her; apparently changing their birdish minds, they started getting defensive about their new home. So Mom closed the door and hoped that maybe the dummies would somehow rediscover that gaping squirrel portal and go back the way they came in.

The doctor, meanwhile, said that you now had a hole in your head, but that you’d be fine. But he apparently decided not to tell you that they’d have to keep waking you up every hour, all night long, to test your neurological functions. Maybe that’s why they didn’t mind opening your door for me at 11:30 in the evening. “This is against hospital rules, you know,” they said to me, but they didn’t seem to be listening to themselves.

Mom told me about the crows, so I went upstairs and opened the door to your room. Nothing was happening —one bird was awake but had retreated, apparently worn out, to a corner. I opened a window and it took about a second to shoo that bird out. The other bird —“I think it was a baby,” Mom said —was nowhere to be found. I suppose we’ll run across it someday, dead in some cranny and rotting away. Or maybe it found its way back out through the hole.

And look at you, brother, lying there like nothing happened. No, you’re tickled over the whole experience. “I just had brain surgery,” you brag with a dull smile.

You had promised, before you went in, that you would wake up five hours after surgery, in order to not miss any of your college’s televised football game, and now here you are. “How are you feeling?” I ask. “The pain’s bearable,” you say. “Aw, look, they’re three points behind. If I’d only have been there, cheering the defense just a little louder!” 

⇋

Josh’s Cancer

March 2 - March 19, 2010

March 2

Josh up from Champaign for eye exam. Says vision is jumpy. I suggest he get glasses that jump in reverse. Considering his earlier concern about dehydration, I write this symptom off as psychosomatic. The doctor, as if to concur, rates his vision as 20-20.

March 14

Josh is back up. Says he has had a CAT-scan in the morning after more symptoms of double vision, and has come to Chicago at the urging of the doctors in Champaign. He looks very glary-eyed. We bring him to the hospital at 9:00 pm. After about an hour in the emergency room —relatively un-tense! —we meet Dr. Raj, who suggests (strongly) that Josh be checked in that evening. He is left there in the emergency room, and we all go home. (“We” being Mom, Parul, Josh’s friends John Valusas, Dave ____ and Keith ____, and me, with a visit from Pastor Gimmi; Don is home with Annie). 

March 15

Josh has an MRI exam in the morning, and Dr. Raj proceeds with a neural operation, placing a permanent shunt from Josh’s brain to his abdominal area. He has one fourth of his head shaved and he has holes in his head and in his abdomen. The operation is done in an hour and a quarter, and Josh wakes up in intensive care with an IV in his arm —standard fare for brain surgery; this one went very smoothly. I am at work during the operation, but I somehow manage to get in to see him at 10:30 pm —only three hours afterwards. Josh is awake, watching a basketball game.

March 16

Josh must pee in a cup and stay in bed, and he doesn’t have much of an appetite. He will have to sleep at a forty five degree angle. But his spirits, despite 

the inconvenience, are high. I finally reach Aunt Grace and Uncle Willard and tell them the news. I call Josh at the hospital to inform him of this. It is 8:15 pm, and he sounds very groggy. It is natural —but it disturbs me.

March 17

Saturday. I am at the hospital from 11:00 to 6:30. There are lots of visitors. Josh insists he is not overwhelmed. I am. I am testy, with Parul especially. But later, at home, on the phone, I tell her that I need her. I have called her after a wrenching cry. “Josh is going to be okay, one way or another,” I keep saying —but what about me? Parul helps me, reassures me. Later, I’m saying it again: “Josh is going to be okay, one way or another,” and I say this to Anneliese. And she cries.

March 18

Sunday. Parul and I visit Josh after church, at 10:30. I promise to pace myself so that I won’t be overwhelmed. But I want to be with Josh, because he’s said he doesn’t want to be alone. Ha! There was never less than three people in the room all day, and often more than five. Good! Good for Josh, and for his spirits. And they are rubbing off on all of us. He is able to walk around now, and the IV is no longer needed.

March 19

We still don’t know what is in Josh’s head. There is a spot, 1.69 centimeters in diameter, on the CAT-scan, but it could still be a blood clot or an aneurism (are they the same thing?). We will know more this afternoon. First, Josh is put through one more test: a cerebral angiogram, in which a catheter is inserted into an artery at his groin and pushed up to his neck, where it releases a dye into his head. Josh will have to keep flat again for eight more hours, from 10:00 am when the test was administered. At 3:30, Dr. Raj comes in with his reports. It is a tumor, at the stem of Josh’s brain, a position more commonly seen in younger children. Dr. Raj describes a biopsy procedure, but says the risk —of brain damage, primarily —outweighs the advantage of knowing malignancy or benignity. Instead we can find out what we are dealing with —there are four kinds of tumors, or “nomas” —by how easily it is removed. There is radiation, with 3,000 rads, which can wipe out the simplest benign tumor. A higher dosage will eradicate a more complex tumor. Surgery is possible, but this presents the most risk. And finally there is a new procedure, only done in three facilities nationwide, called a “gamma knife.” We will learn more in the days and consultations to follow.

It was scary hearing all this, and especially hearing no certain solution nor even a specific problem. And everyone seems to have heard different things. Most optimistically, Don concludes that the tumor is simply not malignant. Perhaps I am the most pessimistic, although I believe I am being objective. At any rate, we must all continue to pray. And we will watch to see whether Josh’s spirits need our help for a change.

⇋

     Before Brain Surgery

     The hairy brother said,

     “They’re gonna shave my head

     and have a look inside.”

     His little sister cried:

     “But you’re not gonna die,

     are you?” Her giant tears

     fell full of lonely fears.

      “No, I’m not gonna die,”

     big brother smiled. “Hey,

     what’s with you anyway?

     It’s just brain surgery!

     —So don’t give up on me.”

     “You’re gonna be okay?” 

     she asked, with one more tear.

     And brother said, “Come here,

     I’m gonna be fine.”