The Ha-Ha

by Dave King

  “Well, I have my child back.”

  The cop chews on this a minute, then says, “Wanna tell me why you were concerned?”

  Sylvia takes a breath. “Officers, I’ve been away, I confess. I had a problem, I received treatment, which I’d rather not . . .” She nods at Ryan. “And I’m really incredibly grateful to everyone here for all they’ve . . . But if one thing’s sustained me—and the last weeks at a place like that are in some ways the most frustrating, because you know just how close you are, with so, so much at stake. So if one thing sustained me, especially this incredibly grueling and difficult final week, it was the thought of returning to some kind of . . . well, peace and normalcy. Of going out on my very first day back and”—she pauses, taking a long, hideously hammy moment to wipe away tears—“of watching my little boy play baseball!”

  The officers look bewildered, and Laurel jumps in again. “We had a little bit of mixed signals, with Sylvia anticipating that Howard would pick her up, and Howard believing—” She stops to take Ruby from me, and the look she gives me says I’ll get mine later. “But everyone’s home now, so things are fine. Course I know you always gotta check.” She sets Ruby on the floor. “My dad was a police officer in Texas,” she adds, though as far as I know, this isn’t true.

  The cop looks at Sylvia. “That right, ma’am? You knew your son was with Mr.”—he squints at my card—“Kaps—”

  Sylvia says, “Kapostash.”

  “And there was a misunderstanding about Mr. Kapostash’s exact whereabouts, and the boy’s, during this period?” The cop glances at me, and I nod. I even smile.

  For a few seconds I expect Sylvia to play along, letting this ride as a simple misunderstanding. It’s her chance to make a graceful exit: to stand up, offer thanks all around, and slither out on Hercules’s arm. But she looks at me derisively. “Oh, cut it out, Howie! We had a plan! We had an absolute plan to—even Ryan knows you were supposed to come by and—my God, why else would I call the police?” A pair of creases forms between her brows, and though she’s filled out during her sojourn away, her face as she glares at me is crystal sharp. Turning to Ryan, she says, “Wasn’t he supposed to pick me up, baby? Wasn’t that what we expected to happen?”

  Ryan’s still plopped on the floor, but now he freezes. “Ryan, honey,” she prompts sharply, and at last he mumbles that he doesn’t know.

  Sylvia’s mouth turns down, but she gives Ryan an affectionate squeeze. Then Raymond puts his two cents in. “Officers,” he says, “you gotta understand. This woman’s child was missing. Who knows where we would’ve had to go looking?” He squints at me. “You got some nerve, you know that?”

  Sylvia sighs philosophically. “You know, I had less than twelve hours to put things together,” she says. “And I was in no condition. I had to choose someone to trust with my most precious care and responsibility, which is my child. And nothing is more—”

  The younger cop’s drumming his fingers with impatience. He coughs suddenly, and Ruby barks, and he squats down to offer her his fingertips. The older officer asks if there are charges to file.

  Sylvia appears to think, then says, “No, not really.” But one of her poorer instincts is the tendency to press any advantage, and she adds, “But I was just so frightened, you can’t imagine. To think that after all this work on myself—and it’s real work—I’d come out and not be able to see my boy, that he could be just anywhere in the whole wide . . .” She squints resentfully at me, as though it’s not familiar Howie standing here, but some stranger who presents a threat. “Because the worst thing, which I don’t think anyone quite realizes about a place like that, is the loneliness, despite being always surrounded by people. You miss your loved ones and you feel all at sea in just every way, and there’s no one to offer comfort in any way. So loneliness, loneliness is really the big—”

  “Bahshht!” I cry, and everybody jumps. Loneliness? She’s got her muscle-hunk boy toy waiting right here! I point to the street and the gold car and the whatever, and though Laurel tries to take my hand, I shout “Bahshht!” again, and “Kargh!” and several other words of my own devising. I took the kid hiking, I want to say, and to his baseball game. Then I brought him home! That’s all there was to it, and I’d like to state also that it’s because she’s not lonely that I left Sylvia hanging. But the cops are telling me to calm down, sir, and Sylvia’s cringing as if I might do her harm. Suddenly, this is intolerable. Everything’s intolerable, from “babybaby” and her other twee endearments to the chirpy way she said there’d be more baseball chances. The fact that she’s had only “Where is he?” to say to me is intolerable, too, as are the simpering alliance with Laurel and using rehab as a dating service and reporting me—this especially!—to the police. The terrible, flirtatious way she invited herself to the baseball game is intolerable, and when I think how I hugged her that day I swing out, and the coffeemaker flies off the counter. This brings Sylvia to her feet, first asking if Ryan’s been cut by the flying glass—it was nowhere near them—then shouting that she’s got a right to her life, and I’m no judge. She parked Ryan here out of the goodness of her heart, she cries as the two cops advance on me. Despite a host of other options, she practically loaned me her child because she thought he would be good for me, because she thought spending time with him would enrich my life! She took pity on me for having no prospects, for living always in the past, with no kids, no loved ones of my own, and she thought taking responsibility for another human being—having for once someone besides myself to care for—might do me some good. Is this how I repay her?

  It’s how I repay her. I’m on the ground now, I’m fucking roaring. I’m pounding my palms on the linoleum. As the short cop throws himself at me, I kick back and topple a chair, hitting my head on the floor. Laurel screams, “Is he having a fit?” but this is no fit, it’s an act of intention, and to show I mean it I bang my head on the floor again, and vibrations ring through my ruined skull. Now Ruby’s yipping and my name’s being called. The cop gets his legs around me so he’s straddling my back like some kind of foreign wrestler, but he’s not nearly strong enough—no one’s strong enough—to make me subside. No sir, this is not a fit, but it’s nothing like Ryan’s paltry tantrum at the ballpark, and I don’t care what happens to me. I could rip out my hair, twist off my cranium. There’s a hand or an arm or a stick at my throat, and I press my fists to my forehead and they grab my wrists. I aim to finish everything the war started, if the miserable, cracked globe of my head would just split . . .

  Way off, beyond my bellowing, is a small voice that’s Ryan, telling me to stop. Then a small hand on my ear, and a voice shouts to back off, son. I grit my teeth and hear Sylvia announcing she’s leaving, this is ridiculous, and I bang my face on the floor again, splattering that same blood-colored mucus that was all over Timothy. Sylvia shouts shrilly that she hopes I’m satisfied with the way I’ve turned a joyous reunion into a bloodbath, and after that I don’t think anything at all. As the cops get the cuffs on, maybe I do slide under for a minute, but I go as far as I can until finally I’m tired; and the last thing I register is Laurel screaming, “Oh, please don’t hurt him! Please, don’t you dare hit him!” By then, they’re already dragging me away.

  III

  51

  THE FIRST TIME MY LIFE CHANGED, I didn’t realize it for a very long time. When the dust-off choppers airlifted us out I was unconscious, but I imagine them rising through the cover of the trees, then slipping along the edge of that former plantation, now the partially burned valley I’d glimpsed from the lookout tower. Upon my arrival at the field hospital I was placed in an induced coma to reduce blood flow and the swelling that’s a major cause of brain-tissue injury, and I went right into surgery to have a shunt implanted. Occasionally, in the years since, I’ve believed I remember my surgeries, and I have clear recollections of having my brain tinkered with. I picture the astonishing showbiz brightness of the operating tent where army doctors leaned over me in their caps, and
I see gloved hands reaching in and out of my head, the fingertips shiny and a little greasy; I see all the metal instruments, too, their sheen dulled by my blood. Also the suturing thread, which, no matter how fine, seems terribly fibrous and absorbent when I think of it looping around inside me, and the various hairy, naked forearms that crossed and flexed above my face. But of course, it’s impossible that I recall anything, even from later operations. And it’s especially implausible that I should remember that first surgery, because I was not only comatose, but practically dead. The fact that it was more than six hours before I was operated on reduced my chances to less than fifteen percent, and people who don’t know better have said my survival alone is a kind of miracle.

  I remained comatose for forty-six days after my injury. During this time the shunt, which had served to drain hydrocephalous fluid from my cranium, was removed, and a breathing apparatus was installed, then also removed once I returned to breathing on my own. Sometime during those six weeks I experienced a heart incident, and a stent was placed in my chest to keep a vessel clear; I suppose it’s still there. And early on, while both of us remained quartered at the aid station, Rimet paid me a visit. I imagine him sitting by my bed in his fatigues and his sling, and because I’ve never known where exactly he got burned, I picture him not puckered or blackened by scars, but as untouched as that first morning we met in the chow line. Rimet had an angular face that went all crooked whenever he smiled, and I see him squinting as he cradled his arm. I wonder what he saw. Just a guy with a head bandage and the sheet pulled tight to his neck, the breathing thing clamped to his nose and mouth, and nothing visible but a chin and two closed eyes: that was me. I suppose Rimet told me jokes—they were his forte—but I hope that as he sat watching the equipment breathe he made some serious remarks, too. Not counting medical professionals, this was the first of the one-sided conversations that would constitute the rest of my life. Then I was shipped off to Japan to continue my recovery, and Rimet went somewhere to continue his. I imagine him in Bangkok, purchasing Thai stick and managing to get laid despite the sling, and I hope he had fun, because later he must have returned to the war. And I don’t blame him for disappearing from my life after that. Rimet had three hundred and forty-nine days to go. He had to be friends with the living, and if he survived his year he probably knew plenty of fellows who got injured, some of them guys he liked better than me. So the casualties piled up, and if I remained in Rimet’s thoughts at all, it must have been only as the first. I wonder if he even knows I came to.

  A few procedures, then, a bedside visit, and a change of venue. This is the record of my activities during that period, and it’s not much, especially compared to my eight busy weeks with Ryan. Throughout my comatose period I was carefully monitored, and the fact that I remained alive was considered encouraging. At some point, I suppose they decided I was not going to die, but no one made projections about when or if I would awaken, or what my recovery would be like if I did. Even my parents were told nothing for weeks after a telegram informed them I’d been injured in the head and leg. I was a cipher, and there was no way to read me until I awoke.

  I should remember what that was like, that return to consciousness. What was my first thought after sleeping for so long? What was my first sensation? But the process was so gradual that I remember little, and of course, I was full of drugs. At the first signs of consciousness they began diagnostics and therapy, and because other factors were addressed first, it was a while before we recognized the depth of my speaking impairment. One thing I relearned in those early days was how to swallow, and I remember holding a spoonful of applesauce on my tongue while I groped for the appropriate muscles. The nurse would offer a little coaxing until, with excruciating effort, I’d take a giant chance and usually send the applesauce spewing into the room or down my chin. I did this again and again in the months after I came to, though I was desperate to get off the needle and taste real food, and I spat on my therapist so often that she took to wearing a bib. But I always thought swallowing would be a benchmark, and that once I’d mastered it, life’s other oral function would fall right back in line.

  I had a little foot-drag, too, at first, though never much difficulty with hands or arms. My right leg was still functioning slowly when I returned stateside, and there were those who felt I should go to a live-in care facility rather than my parents’ house. But I’d been institutionalized for a long time at that point, and my folks were eager to have me home. I think we all believed returning to this place and my old room was the quickest route back to the guy I was, the me who’d been a different and optimistic and talkative person. It was also an affirmation that I had not, in fact, died in a war.

  Thus began those daily trips with my dad. For every two hours of speech work, I put in forty minutes of physical therapy on my leg, and I reveled in those forty minutes. The tasks were so manifest! I could see the rubber balls I was asked to flex against, as well as the ankle weights and the sets of footprints painted on the floor, and I could adjust my movements to meet these objectives. I made terrific progress and felt myself getting stronger, and I practiced walking as a matter of course. I made progress with speech, too, but nothing ever stuck as it did with my walking. When I practiced my verbal exercises I never lost the sense that I was guessing how to form sounds. I was not good at visualizing the inside of my throat, and I never succeeded in isolating or differentiating the myriad muscles used in speech. There was something more profound, too. Some desert realm had sprung up between my mind and my lips, where ideas—of my mother, for example—inevitably languished in passage, never completing the transformation that brought mom into bloom. And though I was supposed to practice at home, I rarely did. Our house had never been a rowdy place, but with my injury it became quieter. My dad, always a taciturn man, now said even less, and Mom was so eager to build my confidence that she couldn’t be tough when it came to my language. She led me through each conversation we had, offering word suggestions and anticipating what I wanted to say; and at home I was permitted gestures, which were taboo at the center. (In one particular sphere of my rehabilitation, my mother was the talker and I the listener. When I first came home, my memory was shaky, and Mom made it her project to replenish my past. Every day, she told me stories of our life before, and when Sylvia was around, her help was enlisted, too. My memories did return, though at times I wonder where my own reconstructions end and true recollection begins.) So the months, then the years, passed, and gestures became my dominant mode of discourse. I don’t blame anyone for this. I think my mom was spooked by my silence, and I was lazy and impatient. In the years following my injury I suffered from adynamia: I had trouble mustering the procedural capacity even for very simple tasks. Morning ablutions remained insurmountable, and if my dad didn’t lead me to the bathroom and guide me through, I could spend an entire morning attempting to shave, while the washbasin overflowed and the razor got mislaid on the toaster and I stood helplessly at the window, my face dabbed with tufts of foam. So I might spend days with my speech therapist, learning about S’s, and I’d learn how to imitate the sound she made. Then we’d move on to something else, and the next time I needed them, those S’s would be gone, just as if I’d been robbed. I slipped back so thoroughly after each improvement that I think I would have slipped back anyway, no matter how much I’d practiced at home.

  After a while, I no longer saw the physical therapist, and as my focus returned I was able to drive again. But Dad still rode across town to my sessions, and we spent more time at the little barbecue joint. By then I was doing high-intensity speech therapy, still trying to build on a few early milestones, and I was also involved in what was called “transitioning class.” This consisted only of extreme head cases, the others commuting from nearby group-living facilities, and of the six of us, three were there because of the war, two for car wrecks, and one had had his skull bashed in during a robbery. Between us we had the whole patchwork of symptoms and abilities: sensory loss, cognitiv
e loss, motor control loss, difficulty with social/adaptive behavior, emotional volatility, and plenty more. Physically, another guy and I were the least disabled—I’d done well with my right leg and was pretty much the picture of health, and he was the same—but in the speech department, I was way at the bottom. During our sessions I’d sit quietly, feeling contempt for my comrades’ labored drawlings and chagrin at my own silence, and as the months passed I let myself slip from that world.

  What finished me off, I suppose, was sheer embarrassment. I’ve always been mindful of what other people think of me, and I was as uncomfortable with those five guys registering my lack of progress as I was in my parents’ world, with its ongoing reassessment by neighbors and shopkeepers. Sometimes at night, after my parents went to bed, I’d imagine a life in which speech was a distasteful activity, like shitting, and I’d get stoned and let myself feel very good; and before long I wanted to feel good in daylight, too. I found a connection for acid and began my practice of picking up hookers, and soon I was missing sessions. I bailed internally before I stopped showing up, and I tripped my brains out during the last of my transitioning classes. What did it matter? I couldn’t contribute, anyway. So I sat and giggled, and during speech therapy I didn’t try. When I finally abandoned that place, I’d been participating in the help industry for nearly a decade, and I never went back. But a few years ago, to my astonishment, I saw two guys from my old transitioning group. They were at the movies, and I was amazed to see them still hanging out together. I was alone, of course. One of the guys still used a walker, and both had the big, round hips of people who’ve done a lot of wheelchair time, but I could tell they’d made progress, as I had myself. I was a bit behind them in line, and I thought I might go up and renew our acquaintance, but in the end I didn’t. They were busy talking, the taller one clearly still struggling with speech, and I couldn’t imagine how, once I’d made myself known to them, I might contribute to their good time.