The Reason You're Alive

by Matthew Quick

  Suddenly I couldn’t speak. I was hoping that I knew what Fire Bear’s son was going to offer me, yet I didn’t want to dare dream it was possible. Frank put his arm around me and squeezed me hard, which is when I realized that a big tear was rolling down my face. I wiped it away, and then Fire Bear’s son stood and said, “Let’s go to the den.” Almost two dozen Indians stood in unison, and we all walked through a few rooms to the other end of the gigantic log-cabin mansion.

  There it was, hanging on the wall over the fireplace.

  It was me in full camouflage and naked baby Hank, his umbilical cord not yet cut but circling us to form a protective bubble of sorts, keeping the napalm and tigers and little yellow men and Agent Orange at bay.

  I looked at Fire Bear and said, “How?” which Hank probably would suggest was an insensitive thing to say to an Indian, but I didn’t mean it that way. I just wanted to know how one of Jessica’s paintings had survived. Plus, I couldn’t get any other words out. I was shaking like an FNG in a firefight.

  Fire Bear told me that my wife had given him the painting when he “visited” my home after the war. They had wrapped it in old sheets and trash bags to protect it as it rode in the back of his pickup across the country, and he’d kept it because Jessica’s kindness on that day was the spark he needed to turn his life around. And what I did for Hank, saving him, was enough for Fire Bear to let go of his own anger. Whenever he got to feeling angry about what the US government made him do in the Vietnam War, he would simply look at Jessica’s painting, think about all that was associated with it, and that would help.

  Fire Bear’s son carefully took The Reason You’re Alive off the wall, and this is when I noticed that they had prepared a special box to protect the painting as it traveled back to the Philadelphia area with us. Six or seven of them helped to wrap Jessica’s masterpiece and get it all padded and protected in the box, and then Fire Bear’s son said, “So do we have a deal?”

  I nodded, and we shook hands. Fire Bear said, “I understand your son will appreciate having this painting?”

  I looked over at Frank. He just shrugged, even though I realized he had set this all up.

  Fire Bear put his big, weathered hand on my camouflaged shoulder. “Let him know I held him when he was a baby, and that his mother saved my life, okay?”

  I nodded, because I couldn’t speak. That morning I’d been worried I might be scalped, and here I was among the warmest people I will probably ever meet, no matter how long I live. I hugged every single one of Fire Bear’s family members, and even though I couldn’t make my mouth work, they seemed to understand that I was grateful as could be.

  Just before I left, Fire Bear’s son—who is also a lawyer, by the way—shook my hand and thanked me for returning the property of his ancestors.

  And then Frank and I were in the limousine with the painting, which just barely fit into the trunk, and driving back to the hotel. I wanted to open up the box there and look at Jessica’s art, worried that this all had been a dream, but Frank said we better not—we didn’t have anyone around to help us get it packed up the right way so it wouldn’t be damaged on the flight home.

  And so I skipped the hot tub and went to sleep right away, hoping the hours would pass by fast. I wanted to give my art-loving son the very painting he’d waited his whole life to see.

  17.

  On the flight home, Frank went into his private room again. I had a lot of time to think about all that had happened during my time as an American.

  Hank would say that I was lucky to be born white and to have powerful and influential friends like Frank, also white. But what Hank didn’t understand is that a lot of people born white in America don’t amount to shit, nor do they ever take rides on private jets.

  I have often wondered how the fuck I made as much money as I did, coming out of a mostly blue-collar neighborhood. No doubt my skin color made it easier for me, especially in the seventies and eighties, but there seemed to be more to it than that.

  Also, I don’t consider the post-Vietnam horror show playing endlessly between my ears for damn near fifty years a lucky thing, nor Jessica’s burning herself to death.

  It was easy to point to Fire Bear and say that if he could make it in America, any race or color could. Any moron with a library card understands that the US government fucked the Indians worse than any other race—Fire Bear no doubt had to be the Jackie Robinson of Indian lawyers to overcome all the obstacles thrown his way as he fought to get his in the land of the free.

  Fire Bear might have been unlucky being born Indian during a time when the white man ruled, but he was definitely lucky to have met up with Jessica when he broke into our home. I would have fucking killed him. And we were both lucky that Death had remained our mutual friend in Vietnam, allowing us to carry on when so many other lives were snuffed out.

  It was easy for Hank to scream and yell about white privilege: no one had ever tried to take anything away from him. He thought his so-called white privilege came to him like his DNA.

  Fire Bear and his entire family knew the game. Frank knew it too. Big T and his brothers understood. So did Timmy and Johnny. Even Sue had a clue. And I thought about how I was lucky enough to know all of them. Maybe it didn’t matter if my son was a bleeding-heart liberal moron, just as long as there were people like me and my friends to keep him in check.

  When Frank emerged from his private chamber, maybe twenty minutes before we landed in the City of Brotherly Love, I didn’t launch into a long bullshit speech proclaiming my thanks. Instead, I reached over and squeezed his shoulder. I looked him in the eye.

  He nodded.

  I nodded back.

  We transferred the painting into a limousine waiting on the tarmac for us, and then we drove to Hank’s house.

  As we turned the corner of Hank’s block and pulled up to his home, I asked Frank if my son had any idea about what we had in the trunk. Frank said Hank was clueless, as always. Frank also told me to enjoy what was about to happen.

  “You’re not coming in?” I asked.

  “It’s family business,” he said.

  I told Frank that he was part of my family, and he smiled and told me that he had some “mentoring” to do in the city, which was his way of saying man up and do the right thing, because these types of life-altering father-son bonding opportunities don’t pop up every fucking day.

  He was right. I nodded and told him to enjoy his mentoring. But then I couldn’t resist adding, “You’re a good man,” breaking our code.

  He let it slide by punching my shoulder and saying, “Go.”

  So I did.

  Frank’s driver helped me carry the painting up to Hank’s door. When he opened up, my son said, “What is that?”

  I told him it was fucking cold outside, so let us in and I would explain all.

  Femke was there, he said, and I said that what I had couldn’t wait, regardless of whether his house was infested with the Dutch or not.

  Once the driver and I got the painting into Hank’s living room, the driver tipped his little black hat and made his exit. Femke and Ella walked in from the kitchen, and my granddaughter announced that they were making rainbow sprinkle cookies. She asked if I would like to try one, so I said sure.

  The cookie was warm and colorful, but I could tell my presence was making Femke uncomfortable. I said I had a present for Hank, but I didn’t want to make too big of a deal about this, so we would just open it and agree that there would be no hugging or crying.

  Hank got this really strange look in his eyes. I knew that he knew what was in the box, because he started peeling off the tape without even asking if he could. Ella started clapping and cheering her father on, but Femke had her hand over her mouth, which clued me in, letting me know that she knew what was in the box too. Say what you want about the Dutch, but they are not stupid.

  By the time Hank had got the large painting free and started demummifying it, he was shaking violently. When he saw my young fa
ce and his umbilical cord and Jessica’s signature in orange paint at the bottom corner, he started to sob. It scared the hell out of Ella, who just hugged his leg and wouldn’t let go. Femke was crying too on the other side of the room. I decided to go have a cigarette in the backyard. I had been through enough emotions in the last few days to last seven lifetimes.

  I could hear kids playing basketball a few houses down, yelling and screaming and trying to break the backboard with all the brick shots they were throwing at it. I lit up and watched the smoke leave my mouth and fly up to the sky. By the time Hank came outside with red eyes and started asking questions, I’d smoked three and a half.

  I gave Hank a civilian version of all I have explained here, even finally admitting that I wasn’t his real father, and therefore not Ella’s real grandfather either, and that I had kept everything from him in the past because I was trying to protect him from the truth. I didn’t tell him that Brian had raped his mother, or that, consequently, I had killed his biological father. Instead, I went with the widely believed story that Brian had simply overdosed on drugs, and told Hank that I’d stepped up to the plate because he needed a father.

  That was when he asked me about the title of the painting, which was apparently written on the back of the frame:

  The Reason You’re Alive

  I confirmed it was the original title. I couldn’t think up a good lie to cover for Jessica, so I just endured the awkward silence as Hank puzzled out the meaning.

  Finally, Hank asked if his mother was going to abort him. Had I had talked her out of that plan?

  For various reasons, abortions weren’t exactly easy to get back then, I told him.

  Then finally Hank figured it out on his own. He looked me in the eye and—with a wounded expression that seemed to conjure little vulnerable elementary-school Hank—he said, “She was going to kill herself with me inside her.”

  It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it. Instead, I lit up two cigarettes, and we smoked in silence.

  Halfway through the smoke, Hank said, “Mom was an even better painter than you made her out to be.” Then he started up with his art-world bullshit talk, even asking if the Fire Bears had hung Jessica’s painting over the fireplace—apparently that was a big no-no, and meant that Hank would have to get our painting professionally cleaned. I understood he was talking about all of this shit so he didn’t have to talk about the harder stuff. I let it slide. Civilians exhale bullshit the way veterans exhale air. And I had learned that long ago.

  Femke stuck her head out and said that dinner was ready, so I told Hank I should leave, but he said he wanted me to stay, and so did the rest of his family. I was doubtful about that, but then Hank asked Femke if she wanted me to stay for dinner, which is when she came outside and kissed me on the cheek. I thought for sure she was playing Judas until she said, “You did a good thing today and I won’t forget it.”

  That was the nicest sentence I ever heard come out of the Dutch woman’s mouth, and it made me want to forget about her fucking a weatherman, even though I never could.

  I had to laugh when Femke served me nothing but an entire plate of kale, sautéed radishes, and beets, just like you knew she would. And there wasn’t even salad dressing, just half a lemon squeezed over my plate, though at least I was offered a pinch of sea salt that the rest of my family could not have, because it wasn’t heart-healthy.

  And I thought right then and there that white privilege did not cover food these days. The Indians and blacks and genetically Vietnamese people I had broken bread with ate so much better than my family. But I decided to keep my mouth shut and listen to Ella go on and on about the play her school was performing. Somewhere in there Femke asked if I would like a ticket, which meant she was trying hard to win me over. I knew my son didn’t have the balls to kick the Dutch out forever. I realized that I had better get political and so I said I would like a ticket, which made Femke smile.

  While Femke was tucking in Ella, no doubt combing her hair like I did in Femke’s absence, Hank sat down on the sofa next to me and said he would always consider me his father, regardless of the fact that we weren’t blood. I just nodded, thinking Hank was using too many words again, making everything awkward, but I appreciated the gesture.

  We were admiring Jessica’s painting. I could see what he meant about it being hung over a fireplace—in the light, you could see the smoke damage—but you couldn’t really blame the Indians for that. Being that they used to live in tepees with a fire in the middle, you could easily see how they would make that mistake.

  Sitting there on the couch with Hank, I had a strange thought, and for some reason I let it escape my mouth. I told Hank that I had chosen him when he had no one else in the world because he was a baby, and here he was choosing me, now that the US government had sliced out part of my brain after spraying me with Agent Orange.

  “So in the end,” Hank said, getting cocky, “you were saved by a liberal who voted for Obama. Is that what you’re saying?”

  It was just like my son to bring everything back to his dumb politics, but I liked the fact that he was busting my balls a little. Maybe there was hope for him after all.

  18.

  I had a big fight with Sue. She didn’t want me to wear camouflage to her wedding but a monkey suit tuxedo instead. I told her I would wear my camouflage jacket and cargo pants and bucket hat just like every other day of the year, because tuxedos were for men weaker than me. Sue actually cried when I told her this, which caught me off guard. I had never seen her get so emotional before.

  Big T entered the debate to work on a compromise. If it were up to him, he said, he would surely let me wear whatever the fuck I wanted, but weddings were for women, which is true, and so he wanted to give his woman whatever she wanted on her special day.

  Big T had been spending more time with Hank, and had even gotten him to attend some springtime Phillies games with us, which I appreciated. I would always love Hank more than Teddy, but when it came to watching sports, truth be known, I enjoyed hanging out with Big T much more than I enjoyed hanging out with Hank.

  Finally, I agreed to go to the tuxedo shop and see the monkey suit Big T had picked out for me. When the salesperson hung up my tuxedo on the display rack, I immediately noticed that while the pants and jacket were black, the tie and vest were camouflage. I looked at Big T, and he said, “I got you,” so I tried on the tux and acquiesced, which made Sue cry again.

  She was goddamn confusing during the buildup to her wedding, changing her mind about everything a million times. Big T kept calling her Bridezilla, but only when she wasn’t around. Me, personally, I just couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over so that Sue would start acting normal again and we could all go on with our lives.

  Finally the day came, and I walked Sue down the aisle. She was beautiful, in a white dress with a long train behind her and Ella walking in front of us, holding flowers, along with one of Big T’s nieces.

  There was a woman preacher, which no doubt made Femke and Hank happy. They were both invited, even though I told Sue she didn’t have to feel obligated. Timmy and Johnny were there too. Even Frank got an invite, although I told Sue and Big T to make sure that happened, because Frank always puts a shitload of cash into a wedding card, and I didn’t want them to miss out on that.

  I wondered about Sue’s biological family back in Vietnam, especially since Hank had finally been in touch with his biological paternal family, saying that he at least wanted genetic information regarding diseases so that both Ella and he could watch for warning signs throughout life. I was okay with that, especially since Femke was playing nice now, and it felt like we were all solid otherwise.

  At the reception, to open things up, Sue and I danced to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” no doubt so that Sue could impress her new family, being that Stevie Wonder is a black musical genius. He’s also blind, and I have already told you about my fear of blind people, but I managed to control that long enough to
get through the many dance practices Sue put me through, which were physically more demanding than training with Gay Timmy. But I did my best on the big night and—to be fair—Sue did most of the spinning around and showboating while I sort of stayed in one spot, just guiding her, or so it appeared to the untrained eye.

  And when everyone was clapping at the end of our dance, she whispered into my ear—which I had cleaned free of hair using the trimmer Hank gave me—and said she loved me. I told her that her father, Alan, would be damn proud of her, and then she was off with Big T, grooving with the young people.

  Timmy and Johnny were dancing with Ella and Femke and Hank, and a lot of Teddy’s friends were trying to get the white people out of their seats, and eventually everyone but me was on the dance floor, having so much fun.

  I watched for a bit, and then I went outside for a smoke. I could still hear the music, but it was a lot quieter.

  With all that had happened, I was already exhausted on account of the fucking brain meds. To be truthful, I had also gotten to missing Jessica again. I missed her every day of my life, but there was something about attending a wedding with everyone I loved except her—seeing two young people like Sue and Big T starting off a marriage in that good hopeful beginning place, all while mine had ended so fucking tragically more than thirty years ago. I didn’t want to make the day about me, because it wasn’t, but I also couldn’t help the way I was feeling. So I just lit up and started puffing.

  Jessica is what they call a conundrum. If Roger Dodger and I hadn’t fought in the Vietnam War, Jessica and I would have never met. And yet I’m pretty sure that our being in the war is exactly what ended my marriage and Jessica’s life early.

  My wife was a sensitive person, too in tune with the world. If most people receive life’s radio frequency at volume four, she received it at volume one hundred million. So while you might read this here report and ponder it for a few hours before going on with your trivial civilian lives, forgetting—just like everyone else—what Vietnam veterans went through during and after the war, Jessica internalized everything, both metaphorically and literally, when you think about the fucking rape and Hank growing in her belly, and so she would never ever stop thinking about all this shit for one single second for the rest of her life. She simply was unable. She never fully recovered from the early blows life dealt her, and I don’t think I had the tools to help her the way she needed to be helped. I saved her ass when she was a pregnant teenager, and I gave her unlimited art supplies and a studio to paint in, but she obviously needed more than that.