Like One Of The Family

He told us about his problem at the dinner table. Or so it seemed. He pushed back his chair and stood in front of us, and at first we thought he was going to make some kind of joke or tell some kind of happy story. He always has been good at that, making us smile. That has been part of his charm. He even had a pleasant look on his face as he began to speak.

"...I will have to retire from the Lakers...." Magic Johnson told us.

"What?" we said.

"I don't have the AIDS disease," he said. "But I do have the HIV virus...."

The news was so dramatic, so incredible, that we didn't even allow it into our heads the first time he spoke the words. HIV-positive? Must be a mistake. Magic? Nonsense. When he continued and the idea took hold, a chill went through us all, a personal chill reserved for only the most dire of family pronouncements. The foreman at the plant had called and said there was an accident.... The laboratory results were back and the tumor was found to be.... A crash on the highway and one of the kids in the car apparently was....

"What?" we asked again, dumbfounded.

"How?" we asked. "Why?"

An insulation of miles and distance and anonymity did not exist. This sadness was here, now, inside the locked front door and right in the room. It was part of the air we breathed. A gunman can go crazy in Killeen. Texas, and fires can burn in the hills of Oakland, and the homeless can even stare directly into our faces on the street, and the connections at best are superficial. Too bad for these people. Isn't it a shame? Too bad. But Magic.... This is someone who has lived in our house for 10 years, 12 years, for as long as some of our children can remember.

He has told us what soft drink he prefers and what shoes he wears and how drugs can kill and why staying in school is very important. There has never been a time he did not want to talk, so we know so much more about him than just the basketball stuff. We know his background. We know his worries in the present, his plans for the future. We know his laugh, the sound of his voice, his smile. He has shared his joys and his disappointments with us without reservation. He has probably spent more time with us—and we have spent more time with him—than most of our blood relatives.

Now he was sick? A disease that we had viewed mostly with passive dismay was suddenly immediate, real. Magic has the virus? He will probably get AIDS? He will probably...die? The explanations for all of those other AIDS deaths, the talk of tainted blood supplies and gay relationships and intravenous drug use, could not be applied. Those on the list of so many other names, even the actors and directors and fashion designers, even the five athletes known to have died of AIDS—football player Jerry Smith, decathlete Tom Waddell, baseball player Alan Wiggins, boxer Esteban DeJesus, stock-car driver Tim Richmond—always seemed remote. Other people. Strangers. Magic's problem was our problem. He was at the table.