Man of the Year

by Caroline Louise Walker

  I slip on leather work gloves I’ve only ever worn once, back when I pruned a Japanese maple to death, and I strap the blower to my back, testing my center of gravity before lifting a sixteen-foot Werner ladder with one hand and a plastic bucket with the other, taking great care not to bash our cars when exiting the garage, pivoting and making a sharp left at the hosta, at which point I get a good view of the gutter at last. The problem is obvious: a wad of leaves and debris, a whole nest of funk blocking drainage at the point aligned with my leak. That PVC extension probably wouldn’t have cut it, anyway. I’ll get a better angle from the top rung. I tighten my grip and walk toward a revolting stench, deciding that if a squirrel died in my gutter, I’ll be man enough to handle it like a boss—which is to say, to call animal control. God, this smell. Jesus, it’s vile. Can gasoline fumes trip olfactory nerves? Or trigger flashbacks, or summon sensory apparitions of flowers rotting in cubes of moldy water?

  A branch cracks. So what if a shrub gets wacked by the back of my ladder? So what if my deltoids still hurt? Pulling my shirt collar up over my mouth and nose, standing under the gutter pileup, dreading what’s up there, I realize I need a garbage bag, so I turn the ladder upright and go to plant its rubber feet in front of our best blue hydrangeas, which are all cracked and beaten and smashed, I now see, only to find my path obstructed, obstructed, obliterated, annihilated, and all I can do is question reality and hope this isn’t it.

  Am I dreaming? Am I flashing back to that summer of hallucinogens a lifetime ago?

  Is this an event that’s now happened?

  (“What did you do when you saw it, Robert?” someone will ask. “Dr. Hart, what did you do?”)

  Stepping back and back again, putting a couple of yards between me and the bushes, laying my ladder in the grass, perfectly parallel to the side of my house, keeping my gloves on, taking this contraption off my back. Leaving everything else as it is. Time untwists and stops being a thing, and it’s as though the entire planet is only as big as me, a battered shrub, and the body rotting below my broken roof.

  Making choices: to panic or not to panic.

  (“How on earth did you stay so calm?” someone will ask.)

  I should yell for help or attempt to find a pulse—first, do no harm—but even with my shirt pulled over my face like this, even with gloves smothering my mouth and nose, I can smell the decomposition. I can taste it.

  Not panicking, not yelling for help yet, not attempting to find a pulse. I can’t bring myself to touch skin that may have already blistered and loosened, blisters that may have already burst, flies that may have already laid hundreds of eggs apiece in open sores, and if the eggs have hatched, thousands of maggots already feeding.

  Is this something that’s mapped on my time line now? An irrevocable, unwanted No?

  His legs are bare. The side of his neck is exposed too. It’s all gray. Violet gray. His neck is contorted. All wrong. The contortion and the color and the smell assure me there’s no point in attempting revival. Contortion and stench: more than enough. His arms and face are obscured by fat leaves and broken branches, by soil acidic enough to turn hydrangeas baby blue. Violet petals hover above and beside Nick’s remains. Perfect blooms, having peaked, are already dying. Soon, they will be decay too.

  (“How did you know it was him, Bobby?”)

  I recognize that gray sweatshirt, those shorts. Ankle socks stretched tight by bloat and stained by putrid fluids. One sneaker knotted to one foot. I glance up, knowing what to look for now, and I see the reflector strip, the loose lace: the shoe stuck in my gutter.

  (“I stood there for two seconds that felt like ten minutes. Time stood still.”)

  What happened here? Everyone will want to know. How did this happen? they’ll ask about my house, my yard, my watch. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t even want him here, as a matter of fact. I wanted him out of my life forever.

  “Shit,” I hear myself say out loud. Shit.

  Believing he was facing his mother’s fate, he chose his father’s fate instead.

  He jumped.

  This doesn’t have a thing to do with me, nothing to do with me. He was depressed. He was a train wreck, this kid. (“Lost cause. Hole in his soul.”) We did our best, and really, I tried to help him. Whatever conversations we may have had only confirmed what he already knew—that he’s genetically predisposed to a malady, that’s all—and anyway, the conversation was between us, so it’s irrelevant. If he told someone, if he made me sound bad somehow, I’ll lie. His word against mine. There’s no paper trail.

  Shit.

  Leather gloves still pressed to my face—(“two seconds, maybe three”)—I leave Nick, what’s left of him, and walk directly to the guesthouse. My phone is in my pocket, and I’ll call. I’ll dial the number in less than a minute, but dead is dead, so a minute won’t make a difference. One minute won’t help the paramedics, or the authorities, who’ll spend too much time as it is going through Nick’s things. Those printouts about bad news and trauma might mislead them or create drama where there isn’t any, an investigation where there needn’t be one. He’s dead. He’s over. He isn’t a person anymore. He’s a bundle of meat and marrow shrouded in gym shorts and faded gray cotton, doing its best to become dust-to-dust.

  I let myself into the guesthouse and am met with the rich, fecal stink of rotting flowers. I grab the pages I printed, still neatly folded on the small table by the door, and get the hell out of there just as Elizabeth opens the sliding glass door across the yard.

  “Hey,” she calls out, “I found that number. Robert?” She steps outside, walks toward me. “Robert, what is it?”

  “Get in the house,” I command, pointing to the door. She obeys, and I take off my gloves so I can hide these folded papers in my back pocket. I’ll shred them. I’ll destroy them after dialing 911. I’ll dial 911.

  “What’s going on?” Elizabeth asks, barely a whisper. She grips her neck, pressing the insides of her wrists together just under her chin. I grab her arm and I lead her upstairs to our bedroom—as far from Nick’s dead body as we can be without fleeing the premises—and I tell her what I found, who I found, what I saw, where. (“Why?” No one knows.)

  Her eyes glaze and she falls to her knees, technically conscious but sufficiently incapacitated to signal that I’m the one obligated to hold it together, maintain composure, offer assurance, to pretend I believe everything’s under control, everything’s going to be just fine.

  Elizabeth whispers, “Get Jonah. Tell him to stay inside.”

  20.

  No one lets you sleep after a thing like this. They’re not quick to say, “So sorry for your trauma, Doctor. Go rest, we’ll clean up this mess.”

  Instead, a troupe of experts makes and leaves new messes. They expect me to be sharp and willing and accessible, but nobody ever says, “One last thing, then we’ll let you sleep.” The deputy medical examiner separates me from Elizabeth from Jonah from me, and they take turns squeezing minutiae from our memories before first releasing me, then Elizabeth, who offers to make tea for our unwelcome guests. I meet her in the pantry under the guise of helping her find Earl Grey.

  “How much longer can this take?” she asks me. “Haven’t they harassed Jonah enough? He hasn’t even had a chance to process this yet. It’s so ugly. They make everything so clinical and technical and unemotional. He’s lost his best friend in the entire world. He doesn’t need this shit. He needs you, Robert.”

  I rub her back. “I’m here for him. These guys will leave soon.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.”

  “I may fall apart.”

  “Please don’t,” I beg. “We can lose our shit once they’re gone, or not. We’ll deal with this together. Do we even have Earl Grey?”

  “No idea.” She scans shelves, flicking labels with her fingers, turning cans, rearranging bags of rice and beans. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I can’t read right now
.”

  I shush her and say, “Relax. Let me.” After a good turn inspecting dry goods, I call it. “There’s only English Breakfast and Matcha Green.”

  “Do the English Breakfast. I feel so fucked up, Robert.”

  “I do too.”

  “So fucked up.” Her fingertips have gone pale from how hard she’s gripping her own arms. “I can’t go back out there.”

  “Stop that. You’re going to hurt yourself.” I take her hands and gently guide them to her sides. “We need to keep it together just a little bit longer. Try. Please.” Before she can argue, I coax her out of the pantry and into the kitchen, where she hides her hysteria and puts a kettle on to boil. She appears to be sad and weary, but not fragile, not cracked, as she spoons loose tea into a ball and chain.

  People in uniform track mud from the roof through the house. Our living room rug will need a steam clean after this. Some of our neighbors call or stop by to snoop. Acquaintances telephone, having heard through the grapevine that there are squad cars in our driveway. They pretend to be concerned rather than nosy. They’re nosy.

  I jot notes in the kitchen—a time line, officers’ names—and eavesdrop as Jonah tells the medical examiner about Nick’s next of kin, an aunt upstate who will, no doubt, be calling us to run through these same questions before long. (“What happened? What did you do when you saw him, Dr. Hart?”) The aunt will ask if there were warning signs. (“Why did this happen?”) She’ll want me to paint Nick’s last day for her, brushstroke by brick by breath by little bit. I’ll repeat, No, we never imagined. I’ll use the word “troubled” and I’ll use the word “normal,” and I’ll balance them with artistry.

  The last of the uniforms finally leaves at nine o’clock. The head cop, Officer Michael Buchanan, and the investigator from the office of the medical examiner—a physician’s assistant named Zebadiah Walsh, although everyone here calls him Walsh—give us business cards and ask us to keep our phones handy for follow-up calls. Elizabeth laments the simplicity of leaving telephones off the hook.

  “I can’t believe we gave up our land line just so we can be more enslaved to these things,” she says, and she opens the door and throws her cell phone across the patio, into the yard but barely—she has a terrible arm—and off she goes to her office. I rescue her phone from the grass. Not a scratch.

  We take melatonin that doesn’t work. Come morning, Elizabeth’s in no condition to leave the house, so I offer to stay home with her for support. I even call Simone to tell her what happened, and for once she doesn’t give me shit about taking the day off. Doesn’t matter, though, because Elizabeth insists on heading to her office, so I guess there’s no point in me staying home alone. Jonah begs to return to his mother’s house. He’s a grown man and shouldn’t beg, but since he’s given me right of first refusal to his life, I deny his request. “We need your support,” I tell him, which isn’t entirely true. What we need is his margin of neutrality: a rubber bumper between my sharp edges and Elizabeth’s soft spot.

  • • •

  Were it not for all the muddy boot prints, one might never believe the degree of chaos we hosted last night, the rotting corpse we hosted for who-knows-how-long. There is quiet today. Calm. Empty mug in the sink. Folded newspaper atop the recycle bin. Quick kiss good-bye from my wife. Radio silence from my son. That goes here, this goes there. Order from chaos. Such is the way of the universe.

  But there’s a blank strip of plaster on my garage wall, reminding me that the stepladder is still laying by our broken hydrangeas. And there’s a stain in the northeast corner, daring me to finish cleaning the gutter. Nick’s shoe is long gone, sealed in a plastic bag, labeled and in custody at the morgue, probably. My own work should be a distraction, at least. A relief. It is not. When I go to grab my lab coat from my staff lounge, the smell of rot makes me wretch. My guts flash back to the stench of death, and I decide PTSD is real after all.

  “Jesus Christ.” I cover my face with one hand, but my eyes sting and my innards twist anyway.

  Simone comes running, ready to rescue. “What is it? Oh God. Are you okay?”

  “That fucking smell.” I point to the ridiculous bouquet that’s been canopying our Keurig for over a week. “Get rid of that, will you please? It’s making me sick.”

  Her lip quivers. Her feet don’t move. My ever-faithful Simone, usually so reliable, fails me now in my moment of need.

  “Hey,” I say. “Please don’t go catatonic. Don’t you fall apart on me too.”

  I open my arms, which immediately feels idiotic, but Simone doesn’t flinch at my gesture, as uncharacteristic and dumb as that may be. Instead, she leans against my chest and grips my shoulder blades, so I give her a halfhearted, fatherly hug in return—patting her back in cut time: there, there—but the way she falls into me is so helpless and committed that I relent and give her what she needs, which is to be comforted, and she transfers her need onto me so that when she finally peels away, I nearly ask her not to. I nearly beg her to keep holding me like I didn’t know I needed to be held, to keep her perfumed hair close to my nose, to continue comforting me.

  “God,” she says, wiping her cheeks. “I’m so embarrassed. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly. This has been a very difficult time for everyone,” I say, gagging once again. “I’m just having problems with that smell right now.”

  She hiccups back another round of tears, smiles, slouches and stares up at me, trying to say something.

  “I’m fine, Simone. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know,” she says. “It’s just—oh God, this is so embarrassing.”

  “What is?”

  “I sent them.”

  “You sent what?” Of course, it clicks. “The flowers?”

  She nods.

  “Why on earth didn’t you tell me? They’re beautiful, Simone.”

  “You called them strange.”

  “They’re beautiful. I love the flowers. It’s the rotten water smell that’s giving me trouble. Can we—?” I jerk my head toward the hallway. She nods and follows to an open exam room, closing the door behind us. “Listen,” I say, “I’m so sorry to have hurt your feelings. The flowers are lovely. Seriously.”

  She laughs, thank God. “Sorry I’m so emotional.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You did something very nice and I’ve been too stressed out to notice, and now, well, this nightmare is turning my head upside down.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Don’t try.” I check the clock. “Feeling better?”

  She nods.

  “Ready to get back out there?”

  She shrugs.

  “Is something else going on?”

  She shrugs again and this time adds a funny look: dropping her chin while maintaining eye contact. She’s pursing her lips, now biting the lower one, now fluttering her lashes. “I gave the flowers to you because I wanted to make you happy.”

  No bearings. No clue. “Okay.”

  “Because nothing makes me happier than making you happy, Dr. Hart.” She steps toward me and lifts her hands. By the time I realize she intends to touch my face, it’s too late to play cool. I jerk my head, my whole body, reacting as though her fingers are fire.

  “Jeez.” She draws her hands to her chest in prayer position. “I thought—”

  “Oh God. You thought wrong.” There’s bite in my words, but there needs to be, for clarity. I can’t manage anyone else’s drama and can’t afford to watch one more person go to pieces right in front of me. “I gave you the wrong impression somehow, and I’m so sorry. You are so important to me. It’s true. I value you immeasurably—as my assistant. Here. At work. Of course, you’re much more than that. You are the glue that holds things together here. Simone, look at me. Look.”

  She lifts her eyes, but her affection has gone undercover. “I’m your office manager,” she says, “not your assistant.”

  “I’m married.”

  “I know. I thought—”

&nbs
p; “Happily married.”

  “Okay. Fine. Call me stupid. I thought you and Elizabeth were having problems—you know, because of the tin.”

  “Because I’m not buying her diamonds?”

  “Yeah. Because of that. And because you roll your eyes when she calls, and—”

  “I do not.”

  She laughs. “You do too. You roll your eyes when she calls, and you wink at me when I take a message without asking.”

  “That’s because I’m amazed at how well you read my mind, Simone. I wink because you are great at your job. It’s like a thumbs-up.”

  “It’s a wink.”

  “It’s appreciation, but fine. I understand. You’re doing the right thing.”

  “Yes, I know. I always do the right thing, all the time. I follow the rules. Maybe I’m late sometimes, but other than that, I do follow the rules.”

  “I mean, I don’t have that many rules.”

  “No, I mean the rules.” She shakes her head and puts her hands on her hips, and she’s stern when she says, “With everyone. I spend my whole life being a nice girl, thinking one of these days I’ll finish first, but where has it gotten me, huh? I’m almost thirty, I’m still single, still at the same job, still being nice. I’m so tired of being good all the time. I thought maybe you—”

  “Simone.”

  “Maybe I could be bad with you.”

  “Okay,” I say, way past ready to wrap it up. “So now we know where we stand. This is good. Healthy communication. And I’m telling you, Simone, you just keep being yourself and you’re going to be fine. You’ll finish first, believe me.”

  She nods without looking at me and lets this soak in, but then she says, “Yeah,” and her posture changes. She leans against the door again, crossing her arms this time. “So tell me something. How would you suggest I channel my integrity if someone were to ask me about those blood vials?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The vials of blood you drew from Nick over the weekend. If anyone were to ask if I ever saw the two of you together, for example, or whether he was here for an appointment, or whether or not you drew a whole lot of blood that never got sent to the lab—or if you let me lie about it to cover your tracks. For example. If someone comes asking those sorts of things, puts me in that position, how would you suggest I continue being true to myself? A nice girl who finishes first.”