Fifteen Minutes to Live

by Phoef Sutton

  “When the weekend was over, driving home, she swore that was it. That it would never happen again. I was terrified she meant it. But she came to my house a few days later. And after that she said it would never happen again and I was terrified again and I spent the next eleven months bouncing between terror and ecstasy and you can’t tell me that a happy marriage and beautiful children have anything on that.”

  “Then she began to forget things and you know all about that. Eventually there came a day when she forgot we were lovers. I can still feel that particular candle being snuffed out. I almost killed myself. Sometimes I wish I had. I’m sure you do too, now that I’ve talked this much. Except,” and he looked down the hall toward her room, “she still needs me.”

  Carl, now wishing to get off this subject, tried to leap back to the old one. “But what do we do?”

  Frank stood up. “I’m going to talk to Martin. Take a look at that letter. See if Jeff really wrote it.”

  “Now?”

  Frank smiled. “Why not? Do him good to get up early. What else do you want me to ask him?”

  “Find out why he lied about Jeff being here. Find out if he knows where he is. And if he’s okay.”

  Frank looked at him and spoke with unexpected emotion. “If anything happened to Jeff it would kill her. Absolutely kill her.”

  “Yeah, well…if we’re even a little right about Martin…you be careful.”

  “Of my brother?” he laughed. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt me.”

  “Carl?” A voice spoke from the hall.

  He turned in surprise to see Jesse behind him, blinking her eyes in the corridor. “What time is it?”

  “I’m about to take you home. This is my uncle Frank Ackerman.”

  “Hi, Uncle Frank.”

  “Hello.”

  “Can I get a Coke?”

  “Sure, Jesse. Frank’s just leaving.”

  “Bye, Frank.”

  She grabbed her Coke and padded off down the hall. Frank followed her with his eyes till he couldn’t see her anymore. Then he looked at Carl.

  “You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?”

  It was past four in the morning, Carl had five beers in him and he wasn’t sure he could have lied to this man anyway. He didn’t say anything, but that said it all.

  “That’s alright,” Frank said, quietly, “It must make her feel at home. I could never do that.”

  He turned and walked out the door. Carl went to the window and watched him climb into one of the cars – he’d chosen the Mercedes from the school lot, Carl noted. As he climbed into the car, his face looked ghostly in the momentary flash of the interior light. Then he disappeared in darkness.

  Carl went into the guest bedroom and held her. They made love and he kept nothing inside himself. He didn’t picture her at eighteen; he loved her as she was and she loved him as she could. When it was over he lay next to her, his head on her breasts, his mind wonderfully empty.

  “Carl,” she said. “I have to tell you. Don’t be mad, but I think I’m pregnant.”

  He held her so hard that she laughed for a second, till she heard the sniffling and knew he was crying. She patted his head and shushed him and told him it would be all right.

  In his mind, he swore he would never let go of her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  They did everything in cars.

  Talked in cars. Partied in cars. Listened to music in cars. Fought in cars. Made love in cars.

  And, remember, this was in the days before the bucket seat was standard. Back then, the front seat of a car was a roomy sofa; a teenager’s living room. No seatbelts automatically wrapped around you as you started the car. You were free to move as you wished.

  And they wished. Sitting sideways, facing each other, discussing politics and the world and how the Republicans could never come back now that Nixon had fallen. Reclining in each other’s arms, flesh touching where clothing had been opened, watching the stars over the mountains through the windshield. She sitting in the middle of the bench seat, pressing herself next to him as he drove, arm around his neck, hand in his lap or on his chest, breathing into his ear, never letting him go.

  Are bucket seats worth the price we’ve paid?

  “Rihannon” was on the car stereo. Carl sat with his back against the door, his knees drawn up on the seat between them. Jesse was smoking a cigarette and had the door half open to let out the smoke. The car didn’t beep to tell them the door was open. Cars didn’t talk back to you in those days.

  “I have some money…” He said. “enough to…I can help.”

  Carl didn’t know the right words to use. He wanted desperately to do the right thing and these days he was pretty sure ‘the right thing’ meant offering to pay for the abortion.

  “How?” she asked, exhaling smoke dramatically. She kept acting like she was alone in this. Didn’t she realize it was his problem too?

  “I can take you to a clinic,” he said. “I’ll pay,” he added quickly, hating the way it sounded. As if he were offering to pick up the check for a pizza.

  She looked over at him from across the long length of the front seat. “So you want to kill it?” she asked.

  This took him totally by surprise. It was one of the phrases that stayed with him for the rest of his life. One that floated up to his consciousness, jerking him awake as he drifted off to sleep in many beds over many years. One he kept composing new answers for, much better than the one he gave.

  “Kill what?” he said, with a nervous laugh.

  “The baby.”

  This put things in a wholly new perspective. He’d viewed the pregnancy as an unforeseen problem, an illness to be overcome, a tragedy to be survived.

  That idiotic nervous laugh again. “What else can we do?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  He couldn’t reply. There was a gulf between them now, and he couldn’t be sure that anything he might say wouldn’t make it wider.

  “What do you want?” he asked her.

  She didn’t answer.

  “I mean, do you want to have it?” He knew she was Catholic, but never thought she was Catholic.

  “I already have it. I’ve already got it, Carl. The question is, what do we do…with it.”

  “Well…um…” There were four goals in his mind. To get her to stop talking foolishly. To get her to agree to an abortion. Not to lose her. To find the magic words that would make things what they were before.

  “Do you think we’re a little young to think about getting married?” he asked.

  “Weren’t we thinking about it?”

  “Well, sure, but in the long run. And I’ll marry you right now, if you want. I will. But we were talking about after college and all. Weren’t we? And you’re the one who wasn’t even sure we should go to the same college.” He played that last part like it was a trump card. “You said we should see other people, so we know it’s right.”

  “And you still want to do that?”

  “I never wanted to do that. You were the one. Stop acting like this is all my fault. I am not deserting you.”

  “If I decided to have the baby, what would you do?”

  “Oh, man, do you think this is fair?”

  “No.”

  “Do you really think it’s fair…”

  “No.”

  “…to ask me to throw my life away, just ‘cause…”

  “Somebody’s life’s gonna get thrown away, Carl. We just have to decide whose.”

  “Oh, now that’s stupid, and you know it.” He couldn’t believe this was Jesse talking. She was the radical, firebrand feminist of the school. He remembered her rage when Lyn Bushnell started going through the cafeteria, passing out pamphlets with pictures of aborted fetuses. The screaming match they’d had by the lunch line; Lyn declaiming about promiscuity and the sanctity of life, Jesse passionately standing up for a woman’s right to control her own body. He’d never loved her more.

  And now she was talking abou
t life and killing.

  “I’m not saying it’s fair,” she was looking straight at him for the first time that night, “and I’m not saying it’s right. All I’m saying is, if I decide to have the baby, if I don’t tell a soul who the father is, if I never ask a thing from you, if I promise never to even call you again, would you still say you’d marry me?”

  He looked right back at her. “Of course.”

  But she knew he was lying.

  She put out her cigarette, opened the car door and walked away. He didn’t call her and, like she promised, she never called him.

  THIRTY

  In many cultures there exists a belief that one must leave the world as one entered it. The eunuchs of Imperial China, advisors to the Emperor kept their testicles in earthen jars to be buried with them. For if they attempted to enter the Kingdom of Heaven without all their original parts, the way would be barred to them.

  Frank Ackerman’s arm, what was left of it after the accident, was disposed of as medical waste. He could never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

  THIRTY-ONE

  In the morning they got up and fed the birds. The feeders were empty, so the birds were waiting impatiently on the power lines. After refilling them, Carl and Jesse stood back in the patio and watched the turtledoves and sparrows feast. A scrub jay chased a mockingbird through the upper branches. The canary didn’t show up and that disappointed Carl, because he wanted to surprise Jesse with it. That was one thing about their relationship; he could never run out of ways to surprise her.

  He made breakfast and thought about their future together. He hadn’t really seen how possible it all was until he’d understood Frank’s plight. That was impossibility; Carl only had to deal with inconveniences.

  One plan was to quit his job, which felt like a small sacrifice, sell the house and move to a cheaper state or country where he could retire on his savings and spend all his time with her.

  Of course, the time could come when she’d require more expensive care and then his savings might not be enough. So the other plan was to keep his job, or at least free-lance to keep money coming in. What he’d do with her when he was at work wasn’t so clear. Perhaps lock her up in the attic like Rochester’s wife.

  He brought a plate of eggs and sausage into the living room where she was flipping through the channels with the remote.

  “Jesus. There must be fifty stations here.”

  “Forty-two.”

  “What kind of TV is this?” She stopped on MTV. “Who is that?”

  “Eric Clapton.”

  “Gawd, he looks like an accountant.”

  She switched to the weather and wolfed down her eggs. They really impressed her. She’d never dreamed that Carl would think of cooking breakfast for her, much less do it well. The news came on, but she didn’t listen. Why get depressed by a bunch of disasters and fires and suicides when your boyfriend, who usually forgets to even send you a card on Valentine’s Day, just made you the best cheese omelet you ever had?

  She smiled at Carl, but he was staring at the news very intently. She looked to the TV to see what had captured his attention. Something about a fire in Pasadena. Some guy had been found burned up in his house. They thought it was suicide or arson. The body was pretty charred, but they could identify it because it only had one arm. Jesse didn’t think that made too much sense.

  She switched the channel to a re-run of I Love Lucy.

  Carl was still staring at the TV and she thought he was looking a little funny. Then he got up and just walked outside without saying anything. She finished her eggs and remembered that this was the one where they were in Hollywood and Lucy stole John Wayne’s footprint from Grauman’s Chinese. She checked Carl again through the French doors and saw him sitting with his face in his hands out on one of the lawn chairs.

  She put her plate down and walked out to him, not knowing what to say exactly. She’d never seen him like this. He was so upset it made him look years older. Was it something to do with that news story?

  “Did you know that guy?” she asked.

  And he looked at her in the strangest way.

  It was up to 90 degrees by noon, but Carl stayed in his office on the East side of the house where the sun came in, sweating and drinking Corona and trying to think. She was downstairs listening to Fleetwood Mac on the stereo. Occasionally she’d come up and ask him if it was okay if she called her mom and he’d have to remind her that they were out of town.

  She’d forgotten about the news broadcast, of course. There’d been more on Channel 9, but it didn’t tell him much. The fire department was called by a neighbor at around five-thirty a.m., but by then the whole house had already been engulfed. An architectural landmark, they said it was. A real loss. They’d been pretty sure it was arson from the first moment. When they found the cans of gasoline and discovered that someone had locked the dog in the detached garage for safety, they were ready to call it suicide.

  Martin Ackerman was notified of his brother’s death at around six-thirty in the morning. He found a suicide note left in his mailbox before he was taken to identify what was left of the body. The contents of the note were undisclosed. No one seemed to question why Martin Ackerman would check his mailbox at a time like that.

  The grass was looking dry in the back and he couldn’t remember when he’d watered it last. He walked downstairs and waved at Jesse as he passed, but she was listening to “Miracles” and didn’t notice him.

  He went outside, picking up the pronged metal pole he used to turn on the sprinklers.

  Frank had gone to see his brother, to follow up on their one, pathetic lead, and now he was dead. He hooked the forked end of the pole around the spigot and turned it.

  The sprinklers shot up and began to spit and hiss, the water forcing its way out into intersecting arcs and covering the air above the grass with rainbows.

  Or had Frank’s going to see Martin merely been an excuse, a way for Frank to flee from this house once he had understood how Jesse felt about Carl? Had that made him see that she was lost to him for good? Had that made him feel there was nothing worth living for?

  The sprinkler next to the greenhouse and right under the birdfeeder was still spitting fitfully as if something was clogging it. He pranced through the mist to check it out. There was a heavy layer of seed husks covering the area – he brushed the sprinkler head clean and it shot up and sprayed, drenching him thoroughly.

  He wiped the water from his face and started to walk back to the house. He’d only gone a couple of steps when he heard a sound coming from the greenhouse. He turned to look and was surprised to hear a loud crack, like thunder right on top of him, and to see a bright bolt of electric light flash inside his eyes.

  Then he was on his knees in the wet grass, about to topple over. He caught himself and saw a two by four, the kind that kept the shelves propped up in the greenhouse, fall to the ground next to him. Somebody had just hit him on the bead with that, and he laughed a little when he realized that he’d actually seen stars, just like they do in the cartoons.

  Fingers crossed the back of his head and forced him to the ground, shoving his face into the sprinkler so that the water blinded him. He twisted to one side and saw the two by four swinging back up in the air. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to cover himself, but the board came back on his head and the thunder and lightning came back and the echo took a long time to die away.

  He pulled his face from the muddy grass and tried to stand. He’d barely lifted his head when a wave of pain hit him so hard that he thought the two by four had come back. But it was lying safely beside him. He twisted his head around and saw no one there. He was very happy that he wasn’t going to be hit anymore.

  He’s gone for Jesse, Carl thought. He took a swallow of water from the sprinkler beneath him and thanked God he hadn’t been knocked unconscious; he could still get there in time. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, but his palms slipped on the wet grass and he thudded to the ground, hi
s head feeling as if it had been hit again, this time by all the two by fours in the world.

  He pushed himself up again and started crawling through the water toward the house, straining to hear anything through the hissing of the sprinklers. The record was still playing. Was that good or bad? Why couldn’t he move faster? Because he was so damned tired, he told himself. True, he hadn’t been knocked unconscious and thank God for it, but a nap sure would feel good right now, he thought, as his face fell forward into the cool wet grass and his eyes rolled shut.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Carl left a trail of water behind him as he ran from room to room, new starbursts filling his head each time his feet slapped on the floor. All he could find were notes telling her not to leave and that he’d be back soon.

  Martin Ackerman’s eyes were red and swollen as he carried another load of trash from his garage down to the corner. Only three more boxes and it would be all gone, hauled to some land-fill somewhere. Let the sea gulls and rats peck and claw at it to get the food underneath. Then it would only live in his memory. Perhaps he could forget it too, but he doubted that. Forgetting came easier to some than to others.

  He walked up the driveway; he’d never noticed before how steep it was, it took all his strength to walk it. Three more boxes to go, he thought as he climbed. Then the past would be gone. There ought to be a way to cut into the brain, he thought, substitute other’s memories for your own. Happy ones that didn’t have to do with death and killing and suicide.

  He was almost to the garage before the wet hands fell on him and shoved him into the darkness. He stumbled into the garage and twisted around to see a figure, silhouetted against the bright sunlight, pulling the cord on the automatic door to close it. He ran to the kitchen door, but the man was there first.

  “Where is she?” the man asked.

  Martin thought he knew the voice, but he couldn’t place it. He tried dodging behind the man, but he grabbed him and shoved him again, knocking him against the three boxes. Martin fell to the floor in a cascade of papers and photograph albums–the trash he’d been trying to unload. Letters were clinging to the man’s wet clothes as he picked Martin up by the collar and dragged him out of the debris.