The Reason You're Alive

by Matthew Quick

  And that’s when Hank said, “But Mom still left us, and she never came back. Never. At least Femke returned home.”

  That sad bit of logic caught me off guard. On one hand, Hank was right. His mother had left us, and I’d never really held her accountable for that, because I loved her so goddamn much.

  On the other hand, Jessica’s suicide had fucked up my son to the point where he was still unable to see clearly when it came to women, even three decades after his mother’s fiery exit from the planet. And I had to blame Jessica a little bit for that, even though I didn’t want to.

  So I pressed my lips together tightly, trying to keep the fighting words from coming out of my mouth.

  I watched Ella push her little feet right and left as she glided around the rink on two shiny blades of steel, mouthing the lyrics to some bubblegum pop song that was playing and I didn’t know.

  Maybe it would be better for her if her mother never left again. Maybe she would avoid Hank’s fate. I didn’t know much about how modern families worked. I only knew that I had fucked up my own beyond repair long ago.

  “Femke calls me ‘Aap,’ ” I finally said. “She hates me. So I guess I’m out.”

  Hank went on to say that he had shared with Femke all that he had learned about me, meaning that I exercised and did business with the gays and had a genetically Vietnamese daughter now and was soon to have a black son-in-law too. He said that Femke was impressed with all of the above, because she’s a moron who keeps track of these things. I didn’t believe that I would ever be able to forgive her, nor would I ever get used to being called Aap, but there was such hope in my son’s expression—hope that I hadn’t seen for a long time.

  And Ella was trying to skate backward and doing a pretty good job of it, even if her legs were shaking because she was nervous. I was proud to see that my granddaughter was at least brave, and that’s when I decided that maybe I needed to be a little braver too.

  And so I told Hank that I had to go face my nemesis from the Vietnam War so that I could have closure once and for all.

  “Clayton Fire Bear?” Hank asked. “The name you kept repeating at the hospital? He was your nemesis?”

  I nodded and told him about that big Indian motherfucker, only I didn’t go into great detail—I told Hank I had stolen an Indian soldier’s knife, and I had to return it before the Indian or I died, because it was the right thing to do.

  “Should we be saying ‘Indian’ or ‘Native American’?” Hank asked, as if a tomahawk-wielding red man in a full feather headdress might skate by any moment just to answer him.

  It was no use trying to explain. Hank had been lucky enough to avoid combat duty, and therefore he wouldn’t understand what I have been talking about in this here politically incorrect report. He asked a few more dumb civilian questions before I shut him down completely by saying, “Frank understands. He’s helping me. It doesn’t concern you.”

  Hank got this wounded look on his face, but there was nothing I could do about that.

  We just watched Ella go round and round for another hour or so, and there was part of me that wished we could just stand there watching her for the rest of our lives, free and clear of Femke forever. Your employer taking out a part of my brain had mellowed me a bit, no doubt, although I know that was not the US government’s primary intention.

  The rest of the day went by in a blur. While Hank and Ella and I were walking through the mall and eating at the food court and then driving home, my thoughts were back in Vietnam, remembering the day when I was ordered to “break the wild Indian.”

  I kept playing the whole scene over and over again in my head, thinking about what children we both were, and wondering if Fire Bear had actually carved his name in the bottom of Jessica’s underwear drawer, and what would happen when I showed up all these years later with his bear-bone knife and all of these questions.

  Frank was convinced that it would be good for both of us, but I wasn’t so sure. What if Fire Bear still wanted to scalp me?

  Hank kept asking me if I was okay, and I kept blaming my distance on the fucking brain meds they had me on, which are exceptionally awful, so that lie was partially true.

  Back at my house, while Ella was watching some unicorn princess bullshit on the television and Hank was making an inedible heart-healthy meal, I caught a smoke in the backyard and called Frank.

  When he picked up, he was out of breath, which meant he was either having a heart attack or he had just finished fucking Geneva, since Frank hasn’t exercised since high school. That was his business, so I left it alone.

  Instead, I called him a motherfucker for getting into my head and fucking with my thoughts, and then I told him I would give the knife back—that I was ready to right that wrong. A lot of bad shit had happened to me recently, and so maybe this would change my luck. Who knew?

  Frank said it was absolutely the right thing to do and that he would accompany me. We would even take this private jet he partially owned, so don’t give me too much credit for the hardship. “This is going to heal you better than anything the doctors could ever do for you,” he said. That wasn’t saying much, considering how fucking stupid my neurologists had already proven themselves.

  I told Frank that I wanted to do this good deed as soon as possible, and he said we could leave the next day, which is one of the perks of befriending men with obscene amounts of money. A limo would pick me up first thing in the morning.

  Hank served me three different kinds of salad for dinner, and nothing else at all—I shit you not. And during salad number two, which was made out of pickled fucking seaweed, I told him I was going away with Frank for a few days, so he wouldn’t have to worry about me. Femke would probably be thrilled.

  He ignored my comment about Femke and instead wanted to know where exactly I was going, but there was no way to explain it, especially in front of Ella.

  “Personal business,” I said, “long overdue,” and left it at that.

  By then I had realized that Hank was talking regularly to all my friends, so I was sure Frank had told my son more than I had. Part of me was grateful for that, because it saved me from doing the hard explaining. But I knew that Frank would give my son the civilian version he could swallow without getting too sick, which is the version we veterans always give civilians, because nine out of ten veterans are truly goddamn compassionate people. We save all the mental suffering for ourselves. Another reason I’m doing this here report too, because I’ve got to thinking that maybe our protecting you from the truths we soldiers have lived for decades hasn’t really done us—or you, for that matter—many favors.

  After dinner Hank let Ella watch more television, which was unusual, because he closely monitored her TV consumption. I understood what was going on when Hank motioned toward the back door and then held two fingers up to his lips, meaning, Let’s have a smoke together. I didn’t approve of Hank’s new secret smoking habit, like I said before, but I went outside with him anyway, because I needed one myself.

  I gave him a Marlboro Light, put another between my lips, and then sparked up both with a plastic throwaway lighter. Just to put Hank’s dumb ass in its place, I lifted up my cigarette and said, “Heart healthy.”

  “One’s not going to kill me,” Hank said. “And you’re not going to buy the bullet anyway, right?”

  I was shocked that Hank had used some of my military slang without irony. He had spent his whole life up to that point mocking my service as he tried his hardest to be the opposite of a real man.

  He went on to say that he had been too hard on me in the past. Turns out Frank, Timmy and Johnny, Sue, and even Big T had been in my son’s ear ever since my surgery, letting him know that he was paying too much attention to my words and not enough attention to my actions.

  He said that even Femke was willing to make an effort to heal old wounds and cease calling me Aap if I stopped referring to her as a “tulip cunt” or a “Euro bitch” and stopped pointing out her country’s many f
laws. That was a tall order for me, but a good place to start when it came to negotiating with the Dutch.

  “I don’t want to fight anymore, Dad,” Hank said. “I just want my family to . . .” And this is when he started crying again, only this time he really lost it, sobbing, covering his eyes, and saying he was sorry, which reminded me of the night Jessica died.

  There was part of me that really wanted to put my arm around Hank and tell him that everything would be okay, but neither of my arms would move, and my lips stayed shut too. A lot had happened, and I needed to stay tough if I was going to keep Death at bay.

  My brain was still healing. I wasn’t strong enough for hugs and froufrou talk at that moment, no matter how much I may have wanted to give my son what he so desperately wanted from me. That’s just the way it was. So I puffed on my cigarette and waited for him to finish the boohooing.

  He finally did and asked for another cigarette, so I gave him one and put another Marlboro Light between my lips too. I held the flame up to Hank’s smoke. The fire illuminated his tear-streaked cheeks, which made me feel ashamed for my son, so I looked away and lit up my own.

  We smoked those down in silence, and then Hank popped in some gum and went inside to wash his hands.

  I stood out there gathering my thoughts and watching my breath stain the winter air. It was quiet. I could hear the highway traffic in the distance, like wind over the ocean.

  Inside I found Ella asleep on the couch and Hank whispering on the phone with Femke, so I went up to bed and thought about all that had happened. I truly could have thought all night, but the dumbass skiers’ prescribed meds were turning off the lights in my mind, one by one, and then suddenly I was gone.

  16.

  The next morning, by the time I had showered and packed a toiletry bag, Frank’s limo was outside waiting for my ass.

  I looked into the guest room and saw that my civilian son was dead to the world. Ella was still asleep on the couch under an afghan my mother had knitted. It had a huge red apple in the center and our family name at the top in green: granger. My dead mother would have liked the fact that her afghan was keeping her great-granddaughter warm. I thought about how this perhaps might be the last time I would ever see Hank and Ella if that big Indian motherfucker were to keep his promise and scalp me. I knew I was still tough enough to win a fight against Fire Bear, but maybe I’d end up losing so much blood being half scalped that it might prove fatal, especially after my brain surgery—so I drank my family in for an extra few seconds.

  In the limo Frank had coffee for me. He let me get in one smoke with the window down before we got on the highway. When I flicked the butt and rolled up the window, he patted my thigh and said, “You have the knife?”

  I pulled it out of my camouflage jacket and showed it to him. He looked it over and then said I was doing the right thing.

  I asked if Frank was sure Fire Bear wouldn’t try to scalp me. He laughed and said he guaranteed no one was getting scalped, but he had never even met this tall crazy Indian motherfucker, so his promise rang hollow, as they say.

  Since Frank wouldn’t let me smoke on his jet, I sucked a few Marlboros down on the tarmac and then slapped the nicotine patch he gave me onto my bicep.

  The pilots were ex-military, so I knew we were okay there, even though they were fucking squids, meaning navy. I busted their balls a little, and they talked shit against the army too, but it was all good, because we weren’t touchy liberals who couldn’t stand to have their balls busted for any reason at all. The military had made us mentally stronger than that. If you can’t stand a little name-calling, you sure as hell aren’t going to hold up under fire, and don’t you forget it.

  Because he’s a spoiled billionaire, Frank has a fucking bed in his jet. Once we were in the air, he said he hadn’t gotten much sleep since I last saw him—which meant he had been having sex with a thirty-year-old model nonstop, so don’t go feeling too bad for him—and then he retired to his “private chamber.”

  I sipped my coffee and looked out at the clouds and laughed. Frank was getting old. Time was, he could grind a model mistress all night long and still have enough energy left over to be a real man in the morning. Now he needed to take naps when he was with his buddies, just so his ability to model-fuck would not decline.

  I’d never want to date a woman forty years younger than me because I’m still in love with Jessica, but to each his own.

  Maybe you are feeling bad for Frank’s wife. If you met her even once, you wouldn’t. That bitch has spent millions and millions of dollars on lady hats alone. She has a whole wing of their mansion dedicated to nothing but lady hats. She has done absolutely nothing for the past three decades except shop for lady hats. She could feed any country in Africa for a year just by selling her lady-hat collection. So it is what it is.

  As we flew west, I palmed my father’s and my lucky dog tags, which always make me feel calm when I’m traveling by air. I’d never fly without them. And I looked down at the vast land I had fought to defend from the threat of communism and little yellow bastards and felt a small amount of pride.

  I saw farms and mountains and rivers and cities and clouds and communities, which all contained millions of unseen American lives—people like Hank and Ella and Sue and Big T and Timmy and Johnny, just trying to get through ninety or so years without fucking up too badly, maybe hoping for a few laughs along the way and the freedoms and liberties necessary to get the job done.

  I’ve always hated the Dallas Cowgirls football team because they have won so many Super Bowls while my Eagles have never hoisted a Super Bowl trophy high in the air, so it was easy to see why the rest of the world hated America, even as they tried so desperately to break through our borders to become part of us. Everyone is jealous of a winner, and America is the biggest winner of all. Why were we all lucky enough to be born here, instead of some other shithole country? That was one of God’s great mysteries, I guessed, and then thought I’d ask God directly if He let me the fuck into heaven, which wasn’t likely, to say the least.

  Twenty or so minutes before we landed, Frank emerged from his private room, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat in the lounge chair across from me. He asked if I wanted him to buy me a suit, and I said that I preferred camouflage while my brain healed. “I’ve always been toughest in my army-issued clothing,” I explained.

  “You were a hard-ass banker for decades. You wore a suit and tie every day back then,” Frank said. “Hell, you were the toughest man in a suit I ever met.”

  “That was before this,” I said, and pointed to the scar on my head.

  Frank nodded. He always wore a suit and tie—that was his uniform. Even if we went to the Phillies game in the middle of the summer he wore a suit, and I respected that. But he’d never traded bullets with gooks in the jungle, and the government had never cracked open his skull either.

  I asked him if he still thought this Indian business was a good idea, and he said it was.

  To protect the innocent, I’m not going to say exactly where we landed, but we caught a few amazing views of mountains on the way down, and then we were on another tarmac.

  I ripped off the nicotine patch and sucked down a few Marlboros before we hopped into another limousine and drove off to a mountain lodge hotel of sorts that sat proudly on a few acres of prime American real estate.

  Lots of animal heads hung on the walls, and the lobby fireplace was big enough to fit Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and then some, for those of you future readers who have actually read the Bible. Frank had booked us into a huge suite with a hot tub in the living room that had a glass ceiling over it so that we could look up at the stars. Which is exactly what we did, with Cuban cigars hanging out of our mouths, after we ate a big steak dinner made from cows that had lived less than ten miles away. I ate my steak under a pair of bull horns hung on the wall behind me. Classic Americana. It was a nice place, and I had to laugh at how far I had come from eating snakes and sleeping in fucking
trees.

  Damn right, America is a good place to live if you’re hardworking and realistic about the world.

  It is not gay to be naked and alone in a hot tub with your best man friend, provided that you are smoking cigars and no part of your body touches his at any point, and so we made sure to stay on opposite sides, getting in and out at different times so our white asses wouldn’t accidentally bump together when they were all hot and slippery. The hotel had these thick bathrobes that were like wearing the best blanket you have ever encountered, and so we put those on and finished the cigars on the couch while Frank sipped some sort of Scotch that probably cost per glass more than you will net in six months.

  Frank said that the next day was going to be a good one for me, and I said that there was a good chance the big Indian might try to scalp me after all, and I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions if I had to defend myself.

  Frank frowned and said, “Are you the same scared kid you were in the jungle fifty years ago?”

  I told him I was never fucking scared, and that’s when he said the point was that we had changed, which meant that Fire Bear had surely changed too.

  Frank and I had changed for the better, but not all Vietnam veterans had. I thought about that fucking rapist, Brian, I had killed, and how Jessica’s brother, Roger Dodger, had been killed in prison a year before Jessica lit herself on fire. Roger Dodger had gotten caught mugging women to keep up his drug habit, even though Jessica and I tried to help him right his ship many times. We made dozens of phone calls on his behalf, trying to get him job interviews. He mostly hadn’t shown up for them, and when he did, he was always wasted, so I offered to pay for help with the drugs and drinking, but he only took that money and got high. Some people you just can’t help, and they end up getting shanked in a jail drug deal gone bad. What a fucking waste. And all after surviving Vietnam too.