Simon Says

by William Poe

  I raided the refrigerator for some of the tuna fish I had made earlier, and with a sandwich and can of Pepsi in hand, retreated to my room. I dug through the boxes I’d brought along, hoping to find a stash of cocaine that I might have overlooked.

  No such luck.

  Two days later, I took Lenny on another shopping spree. Though I protested, he told me to pull into a Mercury dealership, saying that I needed transportation. He wrote a check for the down payment on a charcoal-gray Topaz and arranged for it to be delivered to the house.

  “You need a car,” Lenny said, “now that you’re free again.”

  The turn of phrase made me feel as though I’d just been released from prison, which probably is how Lenny thought of my years in the church. I couldn’t bring myself to protest too much. I did need a car.

  On the way home, Lenny said we should stop by an auto repair shop where a friend of his worked. Lenny had met the man, a born-again Christian named Nathan, at a meeting of the anticult network that Connie and her husband, Derek, had helped to found. They had been active in all sorts of anticult groups during the years I belonged to the Unification Church. Connie basked in the sympathetic smiles she received when speaking from church pulpits about how her brother was “lost to Satan.” She had hoped that I was leaving the Family because “Christ had opened my heart,” as she put it. That would make her victory complete. But I reminded her that I never had been a Christian, that the closest I’d ever gotten was when I filled out a form in the back of an Edgar Cayce book to join the Association for Research and Enlightenment.

  “You wait here, Bubby,” Lenny said when I pulled into the parking lot of the repair shop. “I’ll be right back.”

  I watched from the van while Lenny chatted at the garage door with Nathan, who’d gotten a metal folding chair out of the office for Lenny to sit on. The man’s pompadour drooped over his forehead as he looked down at Lenny and nodded his head. He rubbed mechanic’s grease from his hands with an orange chamois and then took Lenny’s hand and helped him up. They disappeared into the garage.

  Soon Lenny started walking toward the van. He’d been away from his oxygen for too long and was having a hard time catching his breath.

  Nathan came running from the garage waving a hundred-dollar bill. “Lenny, I can’t accept this,” he said, arriving at the passenger-side window just after Lenny got in. “Don’t make me beholden to you like this.”

  “Oh, hell,” Lenny said with an air of self-satisfaction. “You and Louise need something extra, what with them babies on the way.”

  Nathan tried to force the money into Lenny’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it.

  “Drive home, son,” Lenny commanded.

  Nathan stepped back as I put the van in gear.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “Nathan’s wife is having twins,” Lenny said, “and they can barely pay their bills. I wanted to do something.”

  It wasn’t easy to keep my mouth shut. Nathan hadn’t expected charity. I supposed that Nathan wanted nothing more than to save Lenny’s soul. For all Connie’s efforts, Lenny wasn’t very religious.

  Why didn’t Lenny want to provide for Vivian? Maybe in his mind, she was little more than a servant—the one person he could treat badly and get away with it.

  Just before we drove into the yard, Lenny said, “If you treat people right, Bubby, they’ll be there when you need them.”

  Lenny might have realized how foolish his words sounded if he understood that everyone I had ever cared about had turned away. Lenny had no clue how little his gift of a car meant to me. I simply wanted to know that he loved me—me, his independent-minded gay son, not the fantasy offspring who was supposed to worship him.

  When Vivian arrived home and I told her about the car, she didn’t complain.

  “Well, honey,” she said, taking a skillet from the pantry as she began dinner preparations, “I’m glad Lenny did something for you.”

  She placed a frozen chicken in the sink and turned on the hot water to defrost it. Taking a break, she sat at the kitchen table, took off a shoe, and started massaging her arches.

  “I hate to see you working so hard,” I said.

  “If your father’s going to be so foolish, I don’t have a choice,” she said, pressing hard on the ball of her foot.

  Lenny called out from his chair. Vivian rushed to the den. The oxygen tank was depleted.

  “Will you get a new canister?” Vivian asked me as she placed a blood-pressure strap around Lenny’s arm. Reading the result, she said, “His pressure is low.”

  We hooked up a new supply of oxygen, and Lenny perked up.

  “What in hell ya’ll staring at?” he asked. “I ain’t dead yet.”

  “You looked pretty close,” I told him.

  Lenny waved us away. “Ya’ll go away and let me rest.”

  Vivian went back to the kitchen. I followed.

  “Lenny doesn’t mean to make you feel bad,” I said. But we both knew that was exactly what he meant to do.

  A jar of pickles slipped through Vivian’s hands, sending sweet midgets rolling over the linoleum.

  “Damn!” Vivian cursed.

  It might have been the second time in my life I’d heard her swear.

  “That’ll be the devil to try and get out of the cracks,” Vivian said.

  I found a mop and ran it over the floor, while Vivian sat at the table. She was good at hiding her emotions, but the plaits forming on her pursed lips gave her away.

  “If only he cared,” she muttered. “Even a little.”

  “That’ll be the day,” I said.

  Vivian shot me a knowing glance.

  “You remember that horse Lenny had?” Vivian asked. “You’d have thought he cared more about that animal than he did me.”

  I put my hands on each side of Vivian’s face and kissed her forehead.

  Lenny gave me a horse for Christmas one year, a pregnant mare named Bride. When the colt was old enough, Lenny decided to sell it. I was so hurt that I told him I’d never ride another horse. So the next day, Lenny sold Bride as well. He used the money to buy a pedigreed American saddle horse.

  About a year later, the saddle horse cut its hoof on some old wire jutting from the ground near the corral. The wound became infected. Lenny thought he could treat it with store-bought salve and never called the veterinarian. The horse developed lockjaw. By the time Lenny was forced to ask for help, the veterinarian said the horse would need to stay on its feet if it was going to survive the night.

  For twenty-four hours, Lenny stayed beside that horse. Vivian took him food and kept him supplied with coffee. I stood outside the corral, listening as Lenny brushed the horse’s coat and whispered to it. “Good boy,” he’d say. “You’ll be okay.”

  “He didn’t show that much concern when I had my gall bladder removed,” Vivian said as I followed her back to the house after delivering Lenny a fresh cup of coffee.

  “I did,” I reminded her. “I stayed right by your side.”

  “That’s right,” Vivian smiled. “You didn’t want to lose your mother, did you?”

  The way she put it embarrassed me at the time, but she was right. I was terrified she might die.

  Vivian and I were in the kitchen when Lenny ran through the back door at the end of his vigil.

  “He died,” Lenny said, tears forming in the corner of his eyes.

  I was glad. Now he knew how it felt when Sparky died in my arms.

  CHAPTER 4

  As the days went by, responsibility for Lenny’s care fell increasingly on me. Vivian was too exhausted and too distraught about the fact that she was almost out of money. I prepared Lenny’s lunches, though mostly they consisted of soup that Vivian made in large pots and then froze in bags that could be put in the microwave. Lenny usually wanted to stay in the den and have me bring him a tray, but often I insisted that he sit with me at the kitchen table. Lenny would ramble, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention most of the time.


  One afternoon, he said, “I’ve tried to be good to people. Everyone loves me.”

  “Everybody but your son,” I said, regretting it immediately.

  The doctor had been very clear. The aneurysm on Lenny’s aorta could rupture under the strain of too much emotion. I had snickered when I heard it, trying to recall a time, other than the death of his horse, when Lenny had been emotional. But this time, Lenny pressed a napkin to his eyes to dry his tears. I stood behind his chair and rubbed his shoulders.

  “Don’t cry,” I said. “You’re right. Everyone loves you.”

  “I was so young,” Lenny sobbed. “I thought it was enough if I worked hard.”

  An encyclopedia of responses flooded my mind. I hugged Lenny, immediately recognizing the Old Spice cologne I’d smelled the one time he put me on his knee.

  “It’s the drugs,” Lenny said, surprised at his own tears. “They’re enough to make a grown man cry.” He chuckled self-consciously.

  Never having seen Lenny this way, my questions wouldn’t stay put.

  “Why didn’t you want me around when I was little?” I asked. “What was wrong with me?”

  I hoped my questions wouldn’t set him off again, but I needed to know.

  Lenny wiped his mouth with the tear-soaked napkin and gazed out the window. “When you joined that cult,” he said, “I knew it was my fault. It killed me that you weren’t going to finish school. That had been my own dream—until the war hit, and I had to enlist.”

  There was no hope. Lenny lived by his own mythologies. I had received a scholarship to a good college, but Lenny refused to help pay for the room and board. He claimed to be concerned that his health would deteriorate and that I needed to be close. He said I should go to the local college and live at home.

  Ironically, I met members of the Unification Church at the college Lenny insisted I attend.

  A week after the emotional outburst, Lenny asked me to take him out for a ride around the neighborhood. He knew every inch of the landscape and had a story to tell at every turn. Though I’d heard it hundreds of times, he related once again how marauders had hanged the family patriarch from an oak tree in the front yard, accusing him of sympathizing with the North—something that had caused my grandmother’s blood pressure to rise every time she told me the story.

  “There used to be black Powells in these parts. Did you know that?” Lenny asked.

  It was an odd comment coming from a man who picketed Little Rock High School with gun-toting alumni during the crisis of 1957.

  “Back when I was little,” Lenny continued, “around 1930, my father drove me out to meet one of the former slaves. She’d been young at the time, but she remembered being a slave.”

  No wonder Lenny had such a hard heart. His father took him to meet someone the family used to think they owned! And this was the same man whom Lenny considered a saint because he sacrificed for the Sibley community during the Great Depression. The man had a mercantile store and supposedly didn’t call in the debts when farmers failed to pay on their accounts. The family slogan had been seared into my brain: Better one family suffers than for many to do without.

  Lenny pointed out the location of the old store. Nothing remained on the spot but a monument put up by descendants of Sibley’s pioneers. We stopped to read the names carved into it. Most were related to us in one way or another.

  On the way home, we drove up the dirt road to the family graveyard. The arched gate had fallen over in recent years, but the rusted letters still read Powell Cemetery.

  “They’re all here,” Lenny said, his voice tinged with melancholy. He would be joining them soon, and he knew it.

  “We should get home,” I said. “Look at that sky.”

  A few clouds had gathered, but mostly I wanted to get Lenny home before his emotions flared up again.

  I was in my room upstairs when I heard Vivian yell, “Bubby! Come quick!” I nearly flew to the ground floor, sure of what I would find.

  Lenny was sprawled across the kitchen floor. Vivian was beside herself, screaming, “Lenny! Lenny!” as she bent over him.

  Lenny’s normally brown eyes had become steel gray. I called 911 and gave the operator our address.

  “Don’t die, Lenny!” Vivian kept repeating. “Not now, not like this.”

  I retrieved the oxygen tank and put the nosepiece in place, turning the knob to its highest setting. Lenny’s breath returned, and color flushed his cheeks.

  The paramedics set up an IV drip when they arrived, and afterward said that my getting the oxygen probably saved his life. As they carried Lenny out on a gurney, I suggested that Vivian call Connie so she could meet us at the hospital. She dialed the number, but when Connie answered, Vivian lost her voice, and I took the phone.

  “Connie? It’s Lenny. He’s had a heart attack.”

  Connie called out Derek’s name. “What about Mother? Is she all right?”

  “She’s following the paramedics outside,” I said and then asked them, “Where is he going?”

  One of the men said, “Baptist,” as he glanced at Vivian for confirmation.

  “They’re taking him to Baptist Hospital,” I told Connie.

  I rushed to change out of the shorts and T-shirt I was wearing and then ran to catch up with Vivian. She stood frozen beside her car, waiting for me. The ambulance had just pulled out of the driveway. We tailgated them to the hospital.

  Lenny was taken to intensive care before we got to see him. One of the paramedics came over to Vivian. “We revived him three times on the way here,” the man said.

  Vivian grabbed my arm for support.

  Connie and Derek arrived. Derek held the hand of their youngest daughter, Victoria, as she trotted hard to keep up.

  Victoria leaped into my arms, asking, “When can I see Papa?”

  “We don’t know,” I said, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes.

  “How is he?” Connie asked.

  I took her aside, away from Vivian and Victoria. “It’s a miracle he survived. The paramedic said his heart stopped a couple times during the trip.”

  “If Lenny dies, Vivian’s going to take it hard.”

  “It’s more a matter of when,” I said. I didn’t tell her that Lenny would have died at home if I hadn’t gotten his oxygen.

  A doctor came from behind some swinging doors. Vivian grilled him for information, pleading for him to let her see Lenny. Derek took Victoria to a sofa and sat her in his lap, while Connie and I coaxed Vivian to be calm. The doctor was adamant that it was too soon to know anything, and that Lenny needed to rest before receiving visitors.

  Vivian refused to go home, despite the doctor’s insistence. Connie and I decided to stay with her. Derek took Victoria home. He had to work the next day and arranged for his sister to babysit Victoria as well as my older niece, Cheryl, who was at home, sick with the flu.

  Connie and I called family members and friends to let them know that they should be prepared. Hearing us, Vivian went down the hall to sit near the doors to the intensive care unit. Connie telephoned Nathan and Louise, who planned to come to the hospital right away to be with Vivian. I had not realized they were such close friends.

  Vivian and I were the first to see Lenny the next morning. His wrists were secured to the bed rails with cloth restraints. When I saw him clutch at the respirator tube extending down in his throat, I understood why.

  Lenny glared at Vivian with unfocused eyes. Then his midsection rose in a spasm just before he collapsed. Within seconds, a nurse rushed through the flimsy curtains separating Lenny’s bed from the other patients.

  “You’ll have to leave now,” she said.

  I had to pull Vivian back to the waiting room. A few moments later, a doctor approached us.

  “There isn’t much I can do,” he informed us. “Mr. Powell’s arteries have deteriorated, and his heart has lost too much muscle. He wouldn’t survive another operation.”

  “My father didn’t want to be put on
a respirator,” I said.

  “Mr. Powell wouldn’t make it twenty-four hours if we disconnected him,” the doctor said. “But if that is the case, we do have another option. An experimental drug has been effective in other cases such as this. It has to be administered directly through the aorta. We could remove the respirator and try that. The problem is that the medication is only safe for a week; otherwise, it destroys the kidneys. The survival rate has not been good following withdrawal from the medicine.”

  “Are you saying the drug can help?” Vivian asked.

  “There has been success in the short term,” the doctor told her.

  “Go ahead, then,” Vivian insisted.

  The doctor had Vivian sign a release, and went to prepare the medication.

  Lenny responded well. The hospital put him in a private room so that the family could be with him. The respirator tube was gone, replaced by an IV in Lenny’s neck. The miracle drug was a yellow liquid that dripped slowly from a bottle hanging on a rod beside the bed. The effects were startling. Lenny’s color was normal, his eyes were bright, and his mind was clear.

  “How did I get here?” Lenny asked. His voice was hoarse after the removal of the respirator. When he spotted Vivian, he demanded she come to his bedside.

  “Don’t you remember?” I asked, intervening. It was clear that Lenny was about to blame Vivian for bringing him to the hospital. “You passed out in the kitchen. We thought you were a goner.”

  “How long?”

  Connie went around to the other side of the bed and clasped his hand. “It’s been three days,” she said.

  “They didn’t put me on life support, did they?” Lenny said, glaring at Vivian, who was now standing near the foot of his bed.

  “Call it what you like,” I said, before Vivian could say anything. “That yellow medicine is keeping you alive.” I reached for the dial controlling the drip. “I can disconnect it, if you want.”

  “Bubby!” Vivian screamed.

  Connie brushed Lenny’s graying hair with her fingers. “You old grump,” she said. “Don’t go upsetting everyone.”