Squid Corners

by Ed Helenski

  I got off the elevator and looked to the right and left. I was unsure where to go and the signs just seemed like gibberish to me. I was standing just outside the elevator, immobilized with shock and confusion, when I heard my name. I turned and saw Cora walking towards me from the left. I went to meet her. She held out her arms and hugged me, taking me by surprise. Hugging had never been a big part of our family’s life. I wondered if she and Dad hugged a lot.

  “Oh Tom, thank goodness you made it. I’ve been calling and calling but never getting any answer. I was afraid you were going to be too late.” She was propelling me down the hall as she spoke, and her voice had regained some of its original strength. I realized that it was my being here that had revitalized her. As soon as she had someone else to worry about she was able to forget her own hurt, at least temporarily.

  We walked rapidly down the hall towards ICU. “How is Dad doing?” I asked her.

  “He isn’t, Tom. He isn’t doing at all. They don’t have him on life support because that’s how he wanted it. After he had the first stroke he made up his mind about that, and signed those DNR papers. If he couldn’t function he didn’t want to go on. The doctors don’t think he is going to ever regain consciousness.” Her words ran through me, and suddenly there were a thousand things I wanted to tell my Dad, all of them vital. Yesterday if you had asked me I couldn’t have come up with a reason to stop by and even say hi, today all I could think about was I would never get to say hi again.

  We entered ICU, where a central nurse’s station faced four glass walled rooms. Only three were occupied, and at first I couldn’t tell which one was my Dad. Cora led me over to the window that looked in on him. Tubes and electrodes everywhere. Under it all, grey, withered, somehow diminished, lay Burley Tharon. No one would think of giving him that name now. The years of muscle built at the gravel pit were gone. He had wasted away in a matter of hours. Now he just looked old, a lot older than his 68 years.

  “Can I go in there?” I asked Cora, who turned to the nurse. She nodded. I walked around to the door and stepped inside. Cora didn’t follow. She was giving me time alone with Dad. I stood next to the bed looking down on him. His skin was grey, his eyes open but not seeing. In fact it seemed he was already gone, whatever it was that made Burley had departed. What was left bore no trace of him.

  I stood for a long while watching the hesitant and shallow movement of his chest. Around me machines beeped and whirred and hissed, but I didn’t really hear them. I was hearing him, hearing him tell me not to come back to The Corners, not to make the town something it wasn’t. I could hear him telling me to stop acting like a big shot. I could hear a lot of things. There were two things I couldn’t hear, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t hear him telling me he loved me. And I couldn’t hear myself responding in kind.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, mesmerized by the thoughts, the moment, the machines. I do know that it was eleven-twenty six PM when his chest stopped moving. He inhaled, exhaled, and then inhaled no more. Dad was dead. I felt a tear rolling down my cheek and was surprised by it. A hand touched my arm and Cora was there.

  “I’m sorry, Tom. At least he didn’t suffer.”

  I looked at this woman, this person who had made the last years of my Dad’s life a good deal happier than they otherwise would have been. “I am sorry too, Cora. I’m sorry you have lost him. I’m sorry I never got to know the two of you in the time you had together. I’m sorry I let my dad die without ever telling him how I felt.”

  She looked at me, blinking, and at first I thought she would start crying, but instead she just spoke quietly to me, a bit of reproach in her voice. “You sure are a writer. Always caught up in a bunch of words” And with that we stepped out of the room.

  The next few hours I have no recollection of at all. There were things to be signed, and arrangements to make. I know Cora was there, and helped me through it. She called the funeral home for me, and made arrangements for the body to be picked up. I would have to go there the next day and decide on…well, on the things people decide on at places like that. I never would have thought myself squeamish, but I can’t bring myself to even write about that now.

  She reminded me that people needed to be called. She had Dad’s address book with her. I can’t imagine being so together at a time like that. It must come with age. Maybe death isn’t so scary when you are closer to it yourself. I don’t know. I called my brother Peter. He lives in Allentown. It had been perhaps two years since I had talked to him. We are not estranged, but we are not at all close. He was always the athletic type, eight years older than me, we just never bonded. Dad was very proud of him, he is an electrician, has a lovely wife and three kids, got out of Squid Corners and never came back.

  Peter wasn’t surprised by the news. I guess maybe he knew something I didn’t. He asked me when services would be and I told him I didn’t know yet. We didn’t talk long. I also called my Uncle Roger, who lives in Punxatawney. I got some woman, I have no idea who, Roger was never married but was always a player. I hadn’t seen much of him over the years since I was young. He said he didn’t think he could make it, but would send flowers. I would have just called everyone in the book, but Cora told me that was fine for now, and I could call the rest tomorrow. Tomorrow? I had a paper to distribute. How would everything get done?

  I realize now I was in shock, but at the time it just seemed like I was in a dream. Cora said she was going home, and when I offered her a lift she declined, saying the Reverend would take her home. It occurred to me that I had not seen the Rev. Shouldn’t he have been with Dad? She said she would pick out some of Dad’s clothes for him to wear. She told me to be careful on the drive home.

  Being careful wasn’t really possible. I have no idea how the drive went; I don’t recall it at all. I remember being at the hospital, and then I remember coming into my house. The door was still unlocked, but I locked it. I remember that very distinctly. It felt somehow final. I thought the sound of the lock was like the sound a casket makes when it latches. I didn’t know then that caskets don’t make any sound, it’s a kind of rotary key driven deal called, oddly enough, a casket lock.

  I took a shower, I know that much, and I remember thinking I would never sleep. I went and got a beer, and took a few sips, but didn’t really feel like drinking it. At some point I lay down on the bed. Before I knew it I was asleep.

  I dreamed of Maggie slipping into bed with me. She was warm and soft. Eventually I realized I wasn’t dreaming. There was someone in bed with me. I opened my eyes to see Maggie there, beautiful, naked, warm. She stroked my face and then kissed me softly. I started to ask her where she had come from but she shushed me with her finger to my lips. Her hands ran over my body. I had apparently put on a pair of boxers after my shower, and I felt her hand sliding in past the waistband to grasp me. She stroked me, and though when I had lay down sex was the furthest thing from my mind, I was suddenly and ravenously hard in her fingers.

  In the dim light from the hall I could see her face. She smiled that smile women have had since time immemorial, the smile they have when they are with a man they love and find him aroused. It is at once knowing and smug. I can imagine Eve had that look on her face from time to time. I wanted to savor her, to examine her in detail, to spend hours touching and tasting, but there was an urgency to her movements. She shucked down my boxers, and straddling me, she enveloped me in one quick downward thrust. She was wet, eager and ready. We made love quietly, but with a great intensity. I looked up at her, expecting to see her eyes closed, but she was looking at me, and in that moment I knew. I could spend my life looking into those eyes and never grow tired of it.

  At some point in our lovemaking I became aware of tears. At first I thought they were Maggie’s, but they were mine. And when Maggie saw them, she added her own, dripping down onto my face as we approached our climax. It wasn’t a storybook, we didn’t both arrive at the same moment, but as I began to spurt into her she increased her spee
d, and in a few moments reached her own orgasm. She cried out a little, almost a whimper, and then lay on my chest, holding me inside her. We didn’t speak, we just lay together, and eventually I drifted off.

  In the morning I awoke alone, and thought maybe it had all been a dream. Then I smelled the coffee brewing and slipped on my boxers. I padded out to the kitchen to find Mags there, sipping a cup of coffee, looking simply radiant. I loved her. Then and there it was as certain as sunrise; I loved this woman and always would. Without a trace of awkwardness I went and kissed her. She kissed me back and then indicated the coffee. As I poured myself a cup she said “I’m sorry, Tom. About Burley. It must have been quite a shock to you.”

  I nodded. It had been. But now it seemed more…natural I guess. I could accept it. I felt alive, and making love with Maggie last night had been why. She knew just what was the right thing to do. For some, grief is in tears, for others it is in stories and photographs. For me, grief finds its voice in my own reaffirming of life. Death makes me want to be as alive as possible, and for me, that comes with making love. Not having sex, but making love. I don’t think I had ever done that before. Now that I had, I was hungry for it. Maggie must be a mind reader.

  She smiled at me and said, “When you finish your coffee. Then afterwards, well, we have some things to take care of. Tom, I want you to know, I didn’t come here out of sympathy or pity. I came because, well, because I have made up my mind. You are the man for me. Can you stand that?”

  “You just watch me!” I said, laughing. I gulped down my coffee and showed her the empty cup. She stood and took my hand. Leading me along she went to the bedroom. And in the midst of death, we are in life.

  My dad was buried on Saturday, not all that far from where Sioban was interred on Tuesday. My brother Peter and I were both pallbearers, as well as Bobby Schwartz, Reggie Pickett, and two old timers I didn’t really know, friends of Burley’s from the quarry. The Reverend Doland gave a service at the church and then said some prayers at the graveside. Yolanda was there in a black dress that said anything but mourning. I couldn’t help but notice when she slipped away from the graveside. She wandered over to where Chuck Peters sat by the backhoe, waiting for services to be over. They both went around the back of the machine, and I can only imagine what they were doing.

  Mags was super through all this. She pretty much lived at my house, answering the phone, taking care of things, taking care of me. The paper got out on time, although I didn’t put much thought into it. This coming week’s issue is going to be a bit thin, I imagine. Such is life.

  When we were at the graveside I saw that Cora was crying copiously, although she had been stolid and busy all week. I guess that’s how it is, at least for that generation; you do what you have to do, and you don’t break down unless the work is all done. Everyone was going to Cora’s after the service for food and so on. I never knew what to call that, the thing after a funeral. It’s not a reception, or a party, and it’s too late to be a wake. Soiree is too festive. I guess it’s just the thing after a funeral.

  Peter talked to me very briefly before leaving. He was driving back that very afternoon and didn’t seem inclined to stay and eat. In fact, he seemed distinctly ill at ease about being in The Corners at all. “So, uh, I wanted to talk to you, Tommy. About the bills, I mean. I know Dad can’t have had any money, and it isn’t fair for you to get stuck with it”.

  Actually, I hadn’t thought about this myself. But Cora had. Earlier in the week she had given me the important papers that Burley had set aside. One of them was a paid up annuity. It would more than cover the funeral and what taxes there no doubt would be. There was some money in the bank, and a few other things as well. Dad wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t a pauper, either. And there was the house on Burdock as well, right next door. That would have to be sold. I guess I needed a lawyer.

  “Dad took care of things, Peter. It’s all set. In fact, after things are probated, there might even be a little something. If there is I think it should go for your kids. For college.”

  Peter seemed even more ill at ease. He was a good deal bigger than me, nearly six foot, and hard work had left him muscular and bulky where I was soft and thin. He strained the seams of his suit, a suit that was a decade out of style. It was obvious he just wanted out of here. I wished I could somehow bridge the gap between us, but we were from different worlds, despite being from the same place.

  “Whatever you think is fine, Tommy. I, uh, I wanted to maybe stop next door and get a couple photos, you know, but the rest…” he made a gesture like a shrug, with his palms up.

  “Yeah, take whatever you want. If you think of something later that you want just let me know. Ok?”

  “Yeah sure.” He held out his hand. “I gotta get going. Take care, Tommy”

  I looked at the hand and then put my arms out. He looked flummoxed, but managed to give me a brief, stiff, hug. Then he left. It seemed strange to me that he had come alone, but once I thought about it I decided he didn’t want to bring his family to The Corners. I had a feeling Peter shared Dad’s view of the town.

  It struck me then that I never think about our childhood. Not at all. The longer I am here the more I realize that I have closed myself off completely from everything that happened before college. It’s not even that it feels like a different life. I just don’t recall very much. It’s more like my childhood was never more than a snapshot album. I have a series of fixed images, but no sense that any of them were more than just that, images.

  Mags was really the only thing that got me through the week. I got all the copy for the paper together and assembled it, essentially in my sleep. She kept me going, led me through some of the tasks that needed doing, and we made love each night. That’s the only part of this week that seems real; making love with Maggie.

  I was sitting down on Sunday to try and write my column when Maggie came into the office. I was delighted to see her and greeted her with a number of lengthy kisses. When we had settled down she said she had some news.

  “It has been quite the week. I guess sometimes there is just a season for things. You did your story on Old Man Hurley just in time.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he passed last night. In his sleep. I just heard it down at the Paul Bunyan. I picked up some pasta for dinner. Sound good?”

  Eustice was dead. That made me wonder who the oldest resident was now. He had seemed full of life when we talked. Of course, at that age it doesn’t take much. I couldn’t help but wonder if getting the business of 1934 off his chest had anything to do with his passing. It seemed to me a man could keep himself alive a long time if something was eating at him, something that made him afraid to go to his rest unconfessed. I realized Mags was talking to me.

  “Hello? Tom? Are you in there?”

  “Sorry. Was just thinking of some of the things Eustice said to me. Hard to believe he’s gone, he was like a fixture here. He was Old Man Hurley when I was just a tot.”

  “I know. I guess it was fate that got him to you in time. So does pasta sound ok?”

  “It does. And I’ll tell you all about Eustice tonight. And maybe some other things I have found out. Would that be ok?”

  “That would be fine. I know you have some things bothering you, besides just this week. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me about them” And just like that she showed me how much I hold in. I decided then and there to tell her everything that night, or at least as much as I was sure of. I would have to trust our relationship was ready for it. I went back to the PC and sat again, trying to write. I found an email from Larry waiting.

  Tom:

  So very sorry to hear about your dad. I know that sounds lame, but what do you say at a time like this? Hope the flowers were ok, they were from everyone in the city room. I passed your column around, no takers just yet. I will let you know. Be cool.

  Foxe

  I hadn’t even noticed anyone from Hartford had sent flowers. I had to start pa
ying attention to who my friends were.

  Around The Corner November 15

  A song by the Byrds, taken from Ecclesiastes, says “To everything there is a season and a purpose”. This autumn has been a season here in The Corners. A season of loss. In this past week alone, we have buried Sioban Mistick, a child barely grown yet already snatched from us. We buried Burley Tharon, my father, and a lifelong resident of the town. And on Saturday night, Eustice Hurley, the oldest resident of the town, passed in his sleep.

  These losses have touched us all deeply. The loss of anyone in our lives is always a changing experience. And when we lose someone young, someone who has not yet had a chance at life, it is doubly troubling. It makes us rethink our priorities. It makes us hold our children a little tighter. It makes us look twice when crossing the street, hold on getting out of the shower, worry a little more. That sort of thing can get out of hand. If anything, loss should make us appreciate and live the life we have. If it changes us by making us live less, then we are dying a little even in life.

  Loss, even unexpected, tragic loss, has always been with us. In days long ago there were monsters that took our lives, the caveman feared the saber tooth as something elemental, something beyond his control. Floods, famine, disease, they all struck without reason. And took what we loved. Today there are still monsters. One of every hundred people we know will die in an automobile. And for the children there are the pitfalls of drugs. The spectre of HIV. So many dangers. So many monsters.

  It’s important that we respect what the monsters can do, but not let them rule our lives, imprison us.

  I lost my father this week. It was unexpected. I came to realize, a bit too late, that I didn’t know much about my dad. I can sum it up for you here. He was born in 1932, in Altoona. His family moved to The Corners when he was five. He went to school, and when he was old enough, he went to work at the Keystone Quarry in Siegly, where he worked his entire life. He married my mother, Candice, when he was 19. They had my brother Peter, and nearly a decade later, me. He liked to fish and hunt, although I never joined him in those sports. He worked. He liked his beer. He loved my mother dearly. She passed in 1993, and he missed her every day. I was happy to see he found companionship again, and hopefully even love. His name was Clarence, but everyone always called him Burley. He was. I never knew a man with so much strength. I miss him. I wish I had, just once told him that I loved him.