by Homes, A. M.
“Hi, George, how are you doing?”
He moves to hug me, which seems uncharacteristic. “Are you hugging me or patting me down?” George doesn’t answer. “Glad you got the birthday gift.”
“Lousy reception,” George says. “If there’s cloud cover, I get nothing.”
“What about Netflix?”
“Slow, very slow.”
“Can I see? I’ve never seen one in person before.” He unzips his jacket and takes it out. The iPad glows. “It really is a beautiful object, isn’t it?” I tap around at the various applications.
“How do I get to the pictures?” I ask.
George taps something, and the photos of the kids open up, interspersed with images of guns and other military paraphernalia.
“What’s that?”
“Just stuff,” he says. “Remember how we used to play army and Hogan’s Heroes and all that?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I got back into it—not much to do up here.”
“Fun,” I say. I tap on his mailbox—an e-mail in Hebrew pops up. “Hard to read without my glasses,” I say, pretending not to realize it’s in another language. Until I saw the photos of the missile launchers with Arabic writing, and the e-mails from Israel, I didn’t really believe Walter Penny—I thought it was some crazy game. But now it makes sense. George always liked to be a big shot, to wheel and deal, and playing war was a childhood favorite.
“It’s so fucking slow,” George says, grabbing the iPad from me and shaking it like an Etch A Sketch.
“I’m sure there’ll be a faster one soon,” I say, taking out the envelope of papers I need him to sign. “Sorry to bother you with this stuff; I’ve not been able to get your lawyer on the line.”
“Me either,” George says. “He’s not answering my e-mails.”
“You want me to ask around about finding someone new?”
“Maybe,” George says, using the car hood as a writing surface and scrawling his signature on one document after another.
I start to relax.
“You brought my underwear?” he asks.
“Yep.”
“Good,” he says. “The stuff they give us is crap. Government-issue Jockeys, chafes around the leg—so you’re raw and can’t run, and it’s too damned binding. Big balls,” he says.
“Yes—you’ve often said that about yourself.”
“And the pots and pans?” he asks, still signing.
“Got ’em. You doing a lot of cooking?”
“It’s not like I’m in the Domino Pizza thirty-minute delivery zone.”
“What do you make?”
“Cheese sauce and peanut sauce; there’s a lot of flour, butter, cheese, peanut butter, and pasta—not so much sugar—we need more sugar. Have you got any?”
I pull a couple of packets of Splenda out of my pockets. “If you’d asked I would have brought—”
He cuts me off, as though trying to keep it short. “Candlesticks?”
“This is what I could find,” I say, handing them to him. “They were Jane’s.”
He takes the candlesticks like that’s the most important part of all. “Matches?”
I open the passenger door of the car and dig around in the glove compartment; stuff falls out.
“Give me the flares,” George says, “I might need those.”
“This isn’t fucking trick-or-treat,” I grumble as I hand him the flares and the rest of the snacks I packed for the ride. George plucks a half-empty Coke from the cup holder and sucks it down.
“Amazing,” he says. “The flavor, it’s like the nectar of the gods. I wish they’d get a fucking Coke machine in this place.”
“I brought you a gift,” I say, pulling out the cookie tin. George immediately looks both excited and concerned.
“Is that Lillian’s tin?”
I nod enthusiastically.
“What happened—she died?”
“It’s on loan; she’s fine,” I say, suddenly panicked. I hadn’t thought about this part—about how it would happen that I had Lillian’s tin. I knew that Lillian’s cookies were a good lure.
I proudly open the tin, having replicated the same old crinkly, rarely replaced circles of wax paper, the cookies vaguely pale but rich with lumps of chocolate chips and walnut halves.
“How many?” George asks, looking at me expectantly, like a child, not realizing that if he wanted it the whole box could be his.
“Two?” I suggest.
“Per person?” he asks.
I shrug, imagining he wants his two and my two as well.
“Are they kosher?” George asks. I’m caught off guard.
“I don’t know if Lillian keeps kosher,” I say, genuinely perplexed.
“I think she does,” George says, wanting it to be true.
His friend Lenny steps out from behind a tree directly behind me and scares the hell out of me. “So you’re the putz?”
“This is Lenny,” George says. “He’s part of the program.”
I hold out the tin. “Would you like a cookie?” I ask.
And then they are upon us. Like fucking Spider-Man—they drop from the sky. The cookie tin flies out of my hand. There are men everywhere, their infrared goggles lit up with tiny red blinking lights like bug eyes. There is smoke and confusion. Something stabs me in the ass and throws me to my knees. My eyes are burning, I am facedown in the dirt. There is commotion all around me, and then silence. I see what look like blurry puffs of white being sucked upward and realize it’s George’s silk boxers blowing in the updraft of the chopper. I dimly see George just ahead, flat out and bleeding from the head.
As fast as it happened—it’s over.
The Israeli is gone.
I crawl back to the car and into the front seat. “You blinded me, you fucking blinded me,” I bellow, rubbing my eyes.
“You’ll be fine—just stay put,” Walter Penny’s disembodied voice speaks to me. “And stop rubbing your eyes, you’re only making it worse.”
“Stay put for how long?”
“A few hours, maybe until morning.”
“With these dead people?”
“They’re not dead, they’re sleeping.”
“You can’t just leave me here. What if he wakes up angry, what if there’s one you missed, what if someone wants the car? I am a citizen, I have rights.”
I hear multiple people talking in the background, someone saying, “The playmate is turning into a tuna melt and wants a ride home. Can we send someone in to drive him out?”
I start beeping the horn.
“Hold on.”
“You’re not coming to get me? Fuck it,” I say. And I beep again. “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.” A beep for every fuck it.
“Your microphone is in the area of the horn. If you don’t stop beeping, I’m going to fucking unplug your ass. We’ll have someone to you in two minutes. Don’t beep again.”
I hear the chopper coming in—dark. My eyes are stinging, blurry, as I watch them lower a man in full combat gear. He’s clutching a bottle of spring water and looks like a demented commercial for managing your thirst during wartime. The soldier lands, unhooks his tether, and gives a yank; they pull up the rope. He comes to the driver’s side like a gigantic glow-in-the-dark bug, opens the car door, twists the top off the water bottle, and squirts water directly into my face. “Feeling better?” he asks.
Drenched, I get out, go around, and get in on the passenger side of the car.
“You only have half a gallon of gas?” he says, starting the engine.
“It’s not like I passed any gas stations on the way in.”
He throws the car in gear, and we bump along the road. “Are you going the right way?” I ask. “Why haven’t you turned?” I’m wiping my eyes with my shirt. It’s not working: whatever is in my eyes is also on my shirt.
“Hey, shit-for-brains,” Walter Penny’s voice comes over the speaker, “the putz is right, you’re going the wrong way.”
“Sorry,” the s
oldier says. “I’m kind of dyslexic.” He turns the car around and steps on the gas, and there’s a giant ka-thunk. It’s not a sound but the weighty sensation of having struck something.
“What the fuck was that?” Walter Penny asks.
“I think I hit an animal,” the soldier says.
“Let’s hope it was an animal,” Walter Penny says.
“I think we can keep going,” the soldier says. Dented, we limp towards the finish line. At the road, we’re met by two unmarked cars that escort us back to the deployment area.
I get out. Someone hands me a bottle of eyewash. The first thing I see when my eyes are clear is the dented hood, ripped fender, a crack in the windshield, and blood.
Walter Penny comes over to me, looks at the car, and takes a white claim form from his manila folder. “I always keep a few of these with me. It’s a government claim form, same for an auto accident as if you’re killed by friendly fire. The government is self-insured—one form for everything. But here’s the thing,” he says, dangling the form. “It only works if you were at the wheel. Did you drive yourself out?”
Confused, I look around. The soldier has vanished.
“Did you drive yourself out of the woods?” Walter asks again.
“Apparently,” I say.
“Alone?”
“Guess so,” I say, plucking the form from Walter’s fingers.
“Then you can use it for your car and your person.”
“You shot me,” I say to no one in particular.
“The car, your person—put it all on the same invoice,” Walter Penny says.
“Grazed,” one of the unidentified men says. “I watched the playback.”
“You look a lot like your brother,” one of the soldiers says, like that explains it.
I don’t even ask where the Israeli is but notice that one of the unmarked vans is gone. “Are we done here? Am I free to go?”
“Yes,” Walter says. “And don’t forget to get gas.”
I am escorted to the thruway. There is an eerie absence of traffic. I fly towards home at eighty miles an hour. I would go faster, but anything over eighty elicits a disturbing rattle.
Shivering, I turn on the heat—nothing happens. I reach down; the car seat is damp. I flick on the map light and see the seat is dark with blood.
Outside, the sky is beginning to lighten. I’m not sure what time it is—the car’s clock is frozen at three-forty-three. Just before my exit, I take a detour, pulling in at the local hospital. From the parking lot I text Ricardo’s aunt to say it’s all taking much longer than planned and notice six missed calls—messages from Ashley and Ricardo saying hello, telling me jokes, wondering when I’m coming home.
A security guard comes to the window. “No standing,” he says. “Patient parking only.” He points to a sign.
“My ass is bleeding,” I announce, getting out of the car. The guard escorts me to the triage nurse.
“What happened?” the nurse asks.
“I’ve been shot,” I say, and then faint, falling flat to the floor. I come to facedown on a gurney with my ass up in the air, and someone is taking photos. I overhear that they’ve already gotten an X-ray and that luckily there’s no shrapnel to be found.
“We’re going to clean it up,” the doctor says. “There’s really nothing to sew.”
“I got a new digital camera for Christmas; I could bring the old one in,” someone says.
“What’s the resolution?” another guy asks.
“No idea, but it’s better than this piece of crap.”
They’re talking supply chain while my ass is up in the air. The one guy bends down and speaks directly to me. “We’re going to put some numbing medicine on your tushy and clean it up,” he says. “The wound was deep.”
“What happened?” a second asks, bending down.
“I don’t really know,” I say. “It was like Deliverance met The Shining.”
“Do you want to file a police report?”
“No,” I say, “I’d like to keep it private.”
As soon as I say that, I can tell they’re thinking it was some kind of sexual assignation gone wrong.
“There are a couple of questions we need to ask,” one of the doctors says, bending down so we’re eye to eye. “Are you safe in your home? Is anyone hurting you, or otherwise abusing you? You don’t need to feel ashamed about answering these questions.…”
“Do I look ashamed? I really have nothing to say. I don’t know who it was.”
I am given a card for a men-only abuse hotline, a giant shot of antibiotics, and a tetanus shot, and, just like goddamned George, my arm swells: as I’m leaving the ER, I can already feel a hot baseball forming under the skin.
I take the car through a car wash and ask if there’s anything they can do about the car seat—maybe steam-clean? “Hit a deer,” I say, shaking my head.
“Guess so,” the guy says, looking at me funny, noticing the blood all over my pants. “Was it inside the car?”
“It was enormous,” I say.
When I get to the house, a large “WELCOME HOME” sign written in multicolored bubble letters is mounted on the front door. Ashley, Ricardo, and Christina have clearly been up most of the night and are looking at me with great concern.
“Was there an accident?” the aunt asks.
“Did you go see Dad? Did he beat you up?” Ashley wants to know.
“You look crazy,” Ricardo offers.
“Let’s just say it was quite an adventure.” I excuse myself, take a shower, have some Tylenol, eat a giant breakfast, and promptly fall asleep.
“I called in sick,” Christina says in the afternoon, when she comes to check on me. “I couldn’t leave you and the children like this.”
I nod and fall back asleep, facedown—arm throbbing, ass stinging.
I can’t say I’m entirely surprised when a state trooper comes to the door that evening to ask me about a hit-and-run forty miles away. He comes right out and says it: “My brother-in-law works at the car wash and is really into these crime-solver shows.…”
“I get it,” I say, handing him Walter Penny’s card. He calls Walter, and despite the late hour Penny answers and explains that it was a special operation and, yes, there was damage to both the person and the vehicle, but in general it went well, and he has no further comment.
“You’re like an operative—cool, very cool,” the trooper says, hanging up. “I’m going to have a hard time not telling the brother-in-law.”
“I’m really just a former professor who sometimes gets dragged in over my head.”
“Are you coming to the wedding?” my mother asks, near the end of my visit.
“When are you getting married?”
“Soon,” she says. “And why are you just standing there?” she asks. “You’ve been standing there for more than an hour with an awful expression on your face.”
“I have an injury,” I say. “Sitting is difficult at the moment.”
“Hemorrhoids?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Is the wedding definite?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“Are you really going to marry him?”
“Isn’t that why I asked you?”
“I think so,” I say. “But what do you two have in common?”
“We’re old,” she says. “And we both have a love of motion. We like to play catch—they give us these Nerf balls. We love to throw them back and forth. And bingo,” she says. “I help him with his cards. He doesn’t see so well—he lost an eye playing golf years ago—and he has a ringing sound in his head that he’s had for years.”
“That’s what you like about him?”
“We want to move in together,” she says.
“I have no problem with that. And, so you know, you and your friend are always welcome to come and live at home.”
“With you?” she says. “You’re a slob. I was so happy when you moved out of my house. Why should I leave my cond
o to come to you and have to cook and clean? I’m happy here.”
“Marriage is something to take seriously.”
“It’s not such a big deal,” my mother says nonchalantly. “I’ve done it before. So,” she says, “I’ll put you down as a yes?”
I say goodbye and hurry down the hall, hoping to catch someone from the nursing-home administration before they leave for the day. “Excuse me, who do I talk to about your policy on inter-patient marriage?” I get an old-fashioned runaround, lots of hemming and hawing, and finally someone comes out and says it: “We don’t like unmarried couples to room together.”
“That’s the least of my worries,” I say, wondering if my mother and her husband-to-be are in their right minds. “There are estate issues to be concerned about. Should there be a prenup? At their age, shouldn’t this be more of a family decision?”
“Do you have power of attorney?” someone from the home asks. “Are you prepared to have her declared incompetent?”
“Look, I’ve only met the man in question twice, and he’s already calling me ‘son.’ I’m not sure what I’m prepared to do.”
“On occasion,” the social worker chimes in, “we have facilitated commitment ceremonies complete with real flowers, cake, dress-up, and someone who does a little ceremony. That seems to do the trick. We tell the couple that the person performing the ceremony is not recognized by the state but that it costs less than an official wedding. I have the couple and their families sign a release stating that the ceremony is not binding and that, should the couple break up or either or both members die, there is no right of survivorship, no community property, and so on. The paralegal who does the DNR paperwork can help you with that.”
“That sounds good,” I say. “And then do you let them room together?”
“For as long as they are willing and able,” the social worker says. “Meanwhile, your mother is up and walking. She’s been dancing. She may not be the woman you remember, but whoever she is now—she’s doing very well.”
On the way home, I pull into the drive-thru at the Chick-Inn and order a whole bird to go. The woman shoves an enormous piping-hot roasted bird through a window that I think was built only for doughnuts and coffee. A second bag follows with sides of biscuits and potatoes.