The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  “There must be…fifty ways to kill your brother.”

  Which I proceed to enumerate, much to the titillation of the kids.

  “Just hit him in the head, Jed

  Just feed him to a shark, Mark

  Just poison his soda, Dakota

  And get yourself free.”

  And so forth. Digging this convulsive verbal inventiveness. If only I’d had Valium and gray-market herbal pills back when I wanted to be a songwriter. Hmm, getting some odd looks from the grown-ups in the room. Why? Oh, yeah, the fratricide thing. It’s not me, I want to tell them. I’ve dissociated, I’m observing my own performance from a neutral corner of my head.

  “Have you heard about the man…who was mad?”

  This one’s good for maintaining erections, my last scrap of inhibition keeps me from saying.

  “There was a man and he was mad

  And he jumped into the pudding bag.

  The pudding bag it was so fine

  He jumped into a bottle of wine.

  The bottle of wine it was so clear

  He jumped into a bottle of beer.”

  We’re really not supposed to do this one these days, or at least not with the beverages. But look, not only am I doing it, I’m running with it.

  “The bottle of beer it gave him chills

  So he jumped into a bottle of pills.

  The bottle of pills was gone in a flash

  So he jumped into a bowl of hash.”

  I’ve almost forgotten there’s an audience in the room. I tune in to them. Teachers and administrators looking rather agitated by now. Wait, I’m just getting started.

  “The bowl of hash it did him right

  He ate everything in sight.

  The food he ate it made him fat

  He jumped into an online chat.

  The online chat filled him with fear

  He jumped into a bottle of beer.”

  Neat! An endless loop. But that might get old, so the next time through I wrap it up.

  “The bowl of hash it did him right

  And so he had one every night,

  And so he had one every niiiight.”

  I wipe my dripping brow on my sleeve. The kids know something’s amiss and are looking to the adults for some clue how to respond to my PG-13 material, my febrile delivery, my sweat-sheened face.

  “Now I’d like to do a new rendition of an old song about a big ship,” I say.

  Aw, shit.

  “This version is a little more relevant to current…affairs.”

  No, you can’t do this. Absolutely not. This is a parody meant for adult ears only. But look, here I go anyway, superego powerless to pull the brake.

  “Well, they built the Oval Office for to hold the president

  And they thought he was a man who would say just what he meant

  But an intern one fine day

  Came and blew it all away

  It was sad when the intern went down.

  “It was sad (so sad)

  It was sad (too bad)

  It was sad when the intern went down

  On the president-ial

  Staff-ers and aides,

  Secret Service guys in shades

  It was sad when the intern went down.”

  This one’s far from improvised. Days alone on the highway can lead a man to strange pursuits. After I came up with that chorus, I spent hours mining my patchy knowledge of American history to craft verses for as many presidents as possible. Couldn’t think of one for Coolidge—sorry, Dad.

  “George Washington admitted he chopped down the cherry tree

  Our president just gathers every cherry he can see

  Old George had teeth of wood,

  Bill’s cigar, it tasted good

  It was sad when the intern went down.”

  The younger kids, who don’t get it, are terminally confused. The older ones blush, giggle, whisper. The head of the school has crossed the room and is whispering to Glen Ganey. And Cedric Park, who got me into this mess, is drawing a forefinger across his throat, telling me to abort posthaste. I haven’t inhaled properly between lines, and gasp for breath as I leap recklessly into the twentieth century.

  “Well, Herbert Hoover promised us a chicken in every pot

  But Clinton’s daily schedule has a chick in every slot

  Herb started the Depression,

  Young girls are Bill’s obsession

  It was sad when the intern went down!”

  Glen Ganey springs into action, stepping over small heads and legs to join me behind the electrical tape, his ax at the ready.

  “It was sad,

  It was sad—”

  The hideous zing-zang of the autoharp clashes against my guitar—he’s playing along with me, but we’re not tuned to each other. He trumpets with all his might:

  “It was sad when the GREAT SHIP went down!

  To the bottom of the!

  Husbands and wives!”

  Unhampered by asthmatic wheezing, he easily drowns me out. I’ve gotten the hook, in the form of a zither. So this is my rightful place in the Ogden Lane School’s annals, back in the scandal appendix with the head shop and the breast milk. Remember that time the old music teacher came back on drugs and started singing dirty songs?

  I stop playing. Can’t get enough air. I turn around. Good, this wall will hold me up. Sweat rolls off my cheeks onto stained white linoleum. Behind me, Glen soldiers on.

  “When they saw the coast of England

  They headed for the shore

  And the rich refused to associate with the poor…”

  No, you twit! The Titanic left from England! You upstage me and then you get the words wrong? Intolerable. I pivot around to correct him. And suddenly feel faint, too little blood to the brain, my field of vision narrowing. I reach out to damp the strings of Glen Ganey’s awful instrument. Legs buckle. Lights out. Goodnight, Irene, goodnight.

  chapter 19

  385

  Days

  I’m on an airplane. Or is it a train? Outside, a slow thumping in two-four time, accent on the two. Over the loudspeaker, the pilot apologizes for the turbulence on the tracks. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Have to complain to the stewardess about this. Here she comes.

  I open my eyes. The stewardess is a middle-aged woman, her back turned to me, putting towels into a closet. The thumping continues from somewhere below me.

  “I’m sorry, Randall, I didn’t mean to wake you. I just had to get to the closet.”

  Who’s this? Candace, that’s the name. I’m in her house, her guest bed. My father lives here now.

  “Sleep as long as you want. There’s breakfast whenever you’re ready.”

  “What’s that noise?”

  “Your dad’s on the treadmill.”

  She goes out. I sit up, taking stock of myself. Not hungover as much as sore, as if I’ve had a full-body workout. Also ravenous, and parched. There’s a glass of water on the nightstand, which I grab and gulp down. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Treadmill? My father?

  I have only the vaguest recollection of getting here. Cedric Park is a licensed paramedic, that I know. And he didn’t want to call an ambulance, which would involve answering questions about my drug intake. So when I came to on the Assembly Room floor and Cedric saw my vital signs were OK, he helped me to my car, drove me to my hotel. Then he must’ve called Dad, although I don’t remember giving him the number. Dad showed up at the hotel, introduced his semicoherent son to his new girlfriend, and brought me back here and put me to bed. That couldn’t have been much later than early evening, but I’ve been asleep ever since, and the clock says it’s ten in the morning.

  I get dressed and go downstairs toward the source of the thumping. Candace lives in a bright, roomy house somewhere in a hilly suburb—Arlington, maybe, from what I can piece together of the route we took.

  Sure enough, there in the sunroom is my father, in sweatpants and a T-shirt and a ridiculous headband, walking briskly on a trea
dmill.

  “Hi, son!” He sees me and slows his pace.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He shuts the treadmill off, panting slightly. “Glad to see you’re alive.”

  “Me too.”

  He clears his throat. “Son, should I worry about something like this happening again?”

  I always liked that about his parenting style. Whenever Nicole or I did something so patently stupid that the lesson to be learned was obvious, he wouldn’t belabor the point but simply sit back and let us stew in the juices of our own idiocy.

  “No. I think that was a one-shot deal.”

  “Good.” He notices me staring at his head. “Oh, the hair? Decided to stop dyeing it.”

  It’s much shorter than his usual style, and a light steely gray instead of the sandy brown I’ve always known. “I never knew you dyed it.”

  “Really? How old do you think I am?”

  “It just didn’t occur to me.”

  And aren’t we supposed to be fighting, Dad and I? What about, again? I can’t summon any of the bitterness I’ve been harboring. Our confrontation seems as cloudily remote as a childhood memory.

  “Well, let me take a fast shower, and then we can have some breakfast.”

  “When did you move in here, Dad?”

  “November. Right after the, ah, after I saw you at Nicole’s. I haven’t been able to get in touch to tell you about it. Didn’t your sister mention anything?”

  “We weren’t doing a lot of chatting.”

  “Right, right. Well, she’ll get over that.”

  “Anyway, congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” He pats the treadmill. “You ever think you’d see me on one of these things?”

  “Oh, your friend Cedric called this morning to check on you,” Candace says, buttering toast. She has hair to match Dad’s new color, in her case a long ponytail’s worth, and strikes me as a practical, woodsy New Englander, someone who takes her vitamins but doesn’t count fat grams.

  “I wouldn’t call him my friend, exactly.”

  “Well, he certainly went out of his way to help you out yesterday,” my father says.

  I’m guessing Cedric failed to mention his own medicinal contribution to my predicament. “That he did.”

  “More eggs, Randall?”

  “Please.” Candace gets up and cuts me another slice of frittata.

  They seem to be acting as if I were here under nonpsychotic circumstances, so I decide to do the same. “So how did you guys meet?”

  “Frankly, my résumé landed on her desk.” Dad laughs. “I was starting to explore my options outside of teaching.”

  “It’s ludicrous what those witch-hunters were doing to him,” Candace says angrily. “For a stupid lack of judgment so long in the past.”

  “Are they forcing you out, Dad?”

  He slurps his coffee. “No, not in so many words. But the whole thing left a rotten taste. The sheer lack of loyalty I was shown! Individually, institutionally.” He waves a dismissive hand. “I decided, if there’s some other use I can put my experience to, I ought to find it.”

  Candace takes her cue. “And it so happens my company produces educational films. We were looking for a researcher and writer for this American history series.”

  “I came across it on an email list.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “So you’re…”

  “He got the job,” Candace beams.

  “So not only did I meet Candace, I got the job. Part-time for the moment, but next semester’s my last one at the college.”

  “Dad! Congratulations!”

  “Thank you.” We clink coffee mugs. “Really, I was wondering about getting out of academia even before all this crap happened. I’ve always been aware I’m not a natural teacher.”

  “Oh, Howard, I don’t think that’s true.”

  “No, it absolutely is. You’re the teacher in the family, Randall. You should see him with kids.”

  “Except maybe yesterday,” I point out.

  “No, no, forget about that. Candace, this guy can tell a story about anything and get the attention of everyone within earshot. I mean, me, I get to go in the classroom and talk about the most fascinating leaders and events this country has ever seen, and I still manage to make it soporific half the time. Randall could pick up this saltshaker and make up a story about it off the top of his head, and you’d be riveted. It’s a gift, son, it really is.”

  I’m speechless. Who knew he even registered my talents as talents, let alone took pride in them?

  “Well, I’d love to see you perform someday,” Candace says. “Who’s for more bacon?”

  “You’re in the rotary! You have the right of way! Keep moving!”

  Rotaries are the one exception to my father’s normally laid-back driving demeanor. He simply cannot abide the fact that some drivers don’t know the rules, and tries to explain it all to them from thirty feet away.

  “Unbelievable. You’re in the rotary!…Thank you!”

  While dragging me from the Howard Johnson’s yesterday, they didn’t take the time to check me out of the room, so Dad’s taking me back there to collect my things. We make it through the circle of unforgivable incompetence, and he calms down.

  “So I hear you saw Frank and Lela and Derek and Hannah.”

  “Dad.”

  “What? What did I—” He realizes what he said, and we both begin to laugh hysterically. “Marcie! I meant Marcie!”

  “I saw the family in Denver, yes.”

  “Amway, huh?”

  “Big time.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s a shame.”

  “I didn’t get the impression Uncle Frank was gonna put up with it much longer.”

  “Well, that’s good.” He negotiates an intersection. “You tried to tell them about the computer thing?”

  “I did.”

  “No go?”

  “No go.”

  He nods his head, obviously working up to something. “Son,” he finally says. “I hope this doesn’t make you angry, what I’m about to say.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not saying it’s the same thing. But I had a bit of an episode myself once.”

  “An episode?”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. You were, what, three when it started? Your mother and I took pains to keep you guys from knowing about it. But essentially, I couldn’t go over bridges or through tunnels for about two years.”

  “Weird.”

  “It was really pretty bad. Cold sweats, hyperventilation, long detours, the whole bit.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Not entirely clear. It was right after my mother died, so there’s your Psychology 101. But also I was writing that damn Coolidge book. Which, by the way, I did do a little work on all by myself, contrary to what the AHA might tell you. But Coolidge—did you know that while he was in office, his son died, completely at random?”

  “Dad, I have to admit something.”

  “You didn’t read the book.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, I got a little obsessed with that part of the biography. And I guess with mortality, or something. I don’t know if I can articulate it. You guys were, oh, five and two, which may have played a role.”

  “Interesting. Because have you ever thought that Nicole’s stuff with—”

  “I know. I know.” He honks at a driver trying to turn into our lane. “I try not to blame myself, but yes, I wonder.”

  “So what ended up happening?”

  “That’s an excellent question. One day I just realized I was driving over a bridge, and that was the end of it. So, I mean, nothing to do with the Y2K, really. I just wanted to tell you about that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dad’s old phobia hangs in the air for a while until I break the silence.

  “Candace is great.”

  “She is, isn’t she?”

  “And you see
m in good spirits.” Transformed, I’d say.

  “Yep, yep. So what about you, Randall? Seeing anyone?”

  “There is someone, sort of.” I picture Paige storming out of Kinko’s. “Not sure whether it’ll lead to anything.”

  “Well, I don’t want to pry. I think we might have that in common, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, some men do fine when they’re alone. Not me, obviously. And you remember Granddad after Grandma died. Oh, and you never knew Frank before Lela—my God, what a mess he was.”

  “So the available data would indicate that the males of our family don’t function very well without a female.”

  My father accelerates through a yellow light. “Just something to keep in mind.”

  “What happened to Coolidge’s son, by the way?”

  “Oh, one day he’s playing tennis, and he gets a tiny blister on his toe. Later that day it starts to get infected. And within a week he’s dead from blood poisoning.”

  “Wow.”

  “You see how I make history come alive?”

  chapter 20

  382

  Days

  “But I passed out before I could grab the autoharp.”

  “Randall, that’s so crazy.” Paige cringes, vicariously mortified. I’ve just finished recounting my visit to Ogden Lane, in all its glory.

  It took a lot of abject apologies and verbal kneeling, but I finally got her to agree to meet me for a cup of coffee. Not enthusiastically, though, and she went so far as to bring a chaperone to Starbucks. Her friend Moira is reading a book at a table in the corner, keeping an eye on us. God knows what Paige has told her about me. Judging from the look Moira gave me when we were introduced, nothing good.

  “So that was the end of my little fling with Valium.”

  “Well, good Lord.”

  “Good Lord,” I agree.

  “So the Korean EMT stoner gym coach took you away.”