by Brady Udall
The boy closes his eye and sinks back into himself, but there’s no escaping it: the dead are everywhere, and they are waiting for him.
But he’s not ready to go, not yet, especially now that he has everything he ever wanted: his own room, his own bed with sheets clean and crisp, his mother all to himself. His mother, who dotes on him, who sings to him while she swabs out his ears and brushes what’s left of his hair, who reads to him every day from Johnny Tremain or I Was There at the Alamo, who has come back to him, as he always knew she would. The details of his old life are sifting away like the finest powder, but he hasn’t yet forgotten how hard he planned and worked, how he suffered for this reward.
When his father comes to visit, he is quiet, but the boy can sense him there, a presence at the foot of the bed. He can hear the breath whistling through his nostrils, can smell the minty bite of his mouth-wash. Unlike the other visitors, his father doesn’t speak, doesn’t nervously chatter or coo over the boy, or stroke his arms. He stands at the foot of the bed or sits in the easy chair next to it, doing nothing, saying nothing, so quietly that the boy becomes charged with the silence as if it were an electrical current, his body poised and straining for some word or touch. And then one morning the boy wakes and his father is there, quiet as always, the light in the room gray and somber and cool. For a long time there is nothing but the wet sound of breathing, the creaking of work boots, and then the boy feels his father’s rough palm settle gently on his neck. He says the boy’s name, Rusty, and it is the first time in the boy’s fractured memory that his father has ever spoken it without at least a tinge of anger or bewilderment or exasperation, and if the boy could have he would have asked only one question: Was that so hard? Was that really so hard?
Most of the boy’s other visitors, he can take or leave them. Sometimes he listens to what they have to say, sometimes prefers to tune them out and float through the warm and sparkling waters of his mind. So many people come, schoolmates and relatives and church members, most of them strangers. At first, when his siblings came, they were brought in bunches, which was a mistake: buttons were pushed, tubes yanked, dials turned, a stethoscope went missing, and the nurses threatened to ban all family visits until the children learned some manners. The mothers decided that each of the older children would be given five minutes alone with the boy, and though a few might have acted inappropriately (one brother pinched the boy’s arm just to make absolutely sure he wasn’t faking, and one sister threw herself weeping across the boy’s body as if she were Mary Magdalene and he the crucified Lord), most did exactly what was expected of them, which was to tell the boy they were praying for him, they were so very sorry for how they’d treated him, ignored him, ditched and mocked and teased him, how sorry they were for ganging up on him and hurting his feelings. They told him what a good person he was, what a wonderful brother. Like a thirsty sponge the boy absorbed every word, and if he could have he would have told them how wrong they were. He had been Wrong his whole life and he wanted them to know how Wrong they were, too, because he was not a good person or a wonderful brother, he was Wrong, he was the Bad Brother, he was Ree-Pul-Seevo!, the Weirdo and the Pervert. And who were they? They were liars and a-holes, all of them, to be treating him like this now, what a gyp, what a gyp to be saying such things now, to be touching him with such kindness and care.
But they have kept coming, saying nice things and praying over him and bringing him cards which they tape to the walls. Every day his mothers sit with him, massage his limbs and wash and powder his skin. And of course there is the special mother, his secret crush, the one who smells like oranges and glows with a warm light. Somehow he has forgotten her name—like so many other details it has been lost to the gaping crevasses in his head, but it doesn’t matter, she comes to visit every day. The moment she steps into the room he can sense her presence, can smell the citrusy conditioner she uses in her hair, which brings him back into his body so completely he feels the full pain of his broken head and shattered hand, the burns on his face and arms, the corporal poisons of anger and stifled lust seeping from his glands. When she is there next to him, when she rests her hand on his, his whole body aches with something like knowledge for all he has lost, the chances he will never have, to return such a touch, to fall off a horse or eat Chinese food or shoot a crossbow (which has always been one of his most dear wishes), to receive a letter in the mail, to be kissed with longing or punched in the jaw. And though none of this comes to him as conscious thought he brims with the injustice of it, with every unmet need and carefully savored resentment and thwarted desire, every dirty thought and dearest wish, the whole of his childish optimism and loneliness boiling to the surface until he is a straining vessel, ready to burst.
One night she puts her hands on him, as if she knows this, as if she alone can understand. She touches him just the right way, coaxing him along until the pressure is released with a rush of such pleasure and hurt that everything goes white and for a moment it all pours out of him, his past and future, his very soul, and still he comes back, not yet ready to go, and as he sinks into the dark, mica-specked depths of himself he calls out to her, Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Yes, they keep coming, his sisters and brothers and mothers, the nurses who call him Hon and Baby Doll, who rub lotion into his sweet-smelling feet. They keep coming, the church members and neighbor ladies who bring fresh-cut flowers from their gardens, the elders who anoint his ruined head with holy oil and sanctify him with their healing power; his seventh-grade class, which tromps into his room single file, sings one rousing chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and hangs a crooked banner above the window:
GETWELLSOONRUSTY!!! WELOVEYOU!!!
Is it any wonder the boy slowly loses all trace of himself, gradually becomes the person he never, in his most ardent imaginings, hoped he could be: a good boy, a special child, a beloved brother and son.
On a perfect late spring morning in May the boy suffers a massive stroke, which cleaves him neatly down the middle. During the following week, unbeknownst to the doctors, undetected by their machines, he suffers a series of smaller strokes, each further dividing him from himself until he is little more than a scattering of thoughts and impressions held together by filaments of will. He seems to have lost access to his own body, which lies twisted and strange on the bed, bathed in the copper light of late afternoon, but still he is unwilling to let go, he wants to stay just a little while longer, to smell the flowers and read the handmade cards, to look out the bright window where the dead, in their billions, wait for him, to watch his visitors come and go, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying and shaking their heads and whispering sweet, doubtful things only he can hear.
It is a warm day, the sky empty, the heat rippling over the surface of the parking lot like water. The boy waits at the window. He won’t be waiting long.
41.
THE MIDDLE PAIN
AT NIGHT, AFTER HER SHIFT AT THE HOSPITAL, SHE WOULD DRIVE home, the stars aligning haphazardly in the eastern sky, the shadows of dusk soaking into the fields and foothills. She often sat for long stretches in her idling car in Big House’s driveway, considering the prospect of another night with the illustrious Cooter in the swanky confines of the utility closet. Because there were no longer enough parking spots to accommodate Golden’s work vehicles and the wives’ cars, and because all rules of order and common sense seemed to have been suspended until further notice, she had taken to parking in the middle of the lawn.
Her mornings and afternoons were filled with a noisy amplitude, with the piping clamor of children calling her name, demanding her presence. But nights were a different story. Nights were a long slog of the mind, her thoughts sliding past one another but never catching, the gears of her brain stripped smooth. Sometimes she would reach that point in the early morning when all the birds of the world went quiet, that perfect half hour when even the most psychotic starlings slept, and the silence would reach such a pitch she would find herself s
inging half-forgotten Beach Boys lyrics to ward it off.
And it wasn’t helping at all that her body was sending her messages—the pangs in her uterus, the swelling of her breasts—trying to convince her, dumb beast that it was, that it had the power to conceive a bit of joy amid so much uncertainty and grief, that anything was possible. At times it was hard not to feel like the butt of a cosmic joke, lying alone in her dark little cave, wide awake, the owner of a body so hopeful and full of yearning, while not thirty feet away slept her strapping husband, sad and impotent as an old shoe.
Every night she would venture into the dusky atmosphere of the dining room and stare into his sleeping face, searching for some change, a glimmer in which she could read a future for herself, but all she could see there were crosshatchings of exhaustion and bewilderment, a trace of pain around the eyes. Each evening he arrived home well after dinnertime, beleaguered and spent, and, after a quick meal, family prayer, and a good-night kiss for each child and wife, dived headfirst into the Barge’s questionable comforts. Besides the new mantle of authority he seemed to be fitfully trying on for size, the only real change in him was in his attitude toward the children; he had always been sweet with them, mild and forgiving, but now his tenderness had a custodial quality to it. He no longer tried to hide or to escape them, to find a quiet corner where, his back to the wall, he could ward them off with his rolls of blueprints or the phone receiver pressed to his ear. During those first days at Big House, she came upon him more than once holding one of the younger ones, Jame-o or Sariah or Pet, clutching them with such an intensity he seemed to be trying to beam a promise or a prayer of forgiveness into their damp foreheads.
Each night, after making a circuit of the house, and checking in on Faye, who had taken to the new family situation with an enthusiasm rivaled only by that of the Three Stooges, Trish would retire to the utility closet. Each night by the blue glow of the water heater’s pilot light she would reread June’s letter, and then spend much of the early morning hours trying to chase down the possibilities it set loose in her head.
And then one late Friday she dozed off only to be wakened by the sharp, needling pain of ovulation—the charmingly named Mittelschmerz, the middle pain. This time it lasted only an hour or so and ended with that almost pleasurable sensation, deep in her abdomen, of a nickel dropping through a slot. Afterward, she would try to remember what was going through her head as she pulled on her tennis shoes, walked past Golden’s sleeping form to the front door, where she took her keys off the hook. But there was nothing there, as far as she could tell, except a buzzing mental static. She emerged into a crisp, late spring night and settled into the driver’s seat of the Rabbit without a thought in her head.
Only when she turned onto Water Socket Road did she realize where she was headed. She drove fast with her window open, the turbulence tangling her hair, and when she got to the mailbox with the name HAYMAKER painted on the side, she pulled onto the rough two-track without touching the brakes. She bumped over potholes and clattering tablets of sandstone, letting the car roll to a stop as she crested the shallow rise. Down below it was dark except for a single lit window at the back of the first Quonset hut. And there it was: June’s Ford parked in the night shadows out front. She let out a hard, shuddering breath.
But she did not go down. She stayed in her seat, listening to the lowing of a train passing somewhere to the south. She got out and paced around the car under an impossible net of stars, seized by a black flash of confusion. What was she about to do? Where was Faye? With a burst of relief she realized she had forgotten something. She got back in the car.
The hospital parking lot was nearly empty. She walked down the long corridors, past the darkened rooms and the abandoned nurses’ station. Nola had the eight-to-twelve shift tonight, and Trish found her in the soft easy chair next to Rusty’s bed, head thrown back and snoring in rhythm like a well-oiled machine. Trish woke her, told her as long as she couldn’t sleep she might as well take the rest of Nola’s shift, and Nola wandered off, stretching, smacking her lips, saying, “Thanks, Trishy dear, you’re a doll.”
Earlier today, Rusty had spent most of Trish’s shift down in Radiology getting a few more X-rays at Rose’s request, in hopes the doctors would find a miracle: the metal fragments in his brain suddenly accessible and therefore removable or, better yet, disappeared altogether, spirited away by the hand of God. The family had been fasting and praying for such an outcome, gathering each night to say a special prayer on Rusty’s behalf, and Rose in particular seemed convinced that faith, exercised with staunch vigilance, could bring back her son.
And so today Trish had not given Rusty his bath, which was why she was here now. His body was slowly transforming itself into an expression of the trauma visited upon his brain; head craned to the left and into his shoulder, his neck held rigid, his knees drawing up under the sheets, his left hand clenched and beginning to curl inward at the wrist, as if his body were trying to fold itself around the last mote of life at its center. Even the simple task of taking off the gown had become difficult—the joints stiff, the tendons like sun-hardened leather—but once she had removed the diaper and quickly swabbed the genitals, bringing the straining body to a quick, shuddering release, she felt it relax, the flesh softening, the neck going slack, the head easing into the pillow.
She’d always rushed through bath duty in the perfunctory manner she’d learned from the nurses, but here, now, in the deep hush of night, with no one to see or to judge, she took her time. First the feet, cold and bone-white and decidedly feminine—the nails carefully tended, she knew, by the boy’s mother—and then on to the calves and thighs, the full hips and soft belly, the chest with its nipples so faint and vestigial they were hardly there at all, and then the smooth arms, limp and wet in her hands. Except for a scattering of freckles and the few faint curling hairs on the groin and in the armpits it was still very much the body of a child, pale and sweet and untouched by time.
With great care she soaped and rinsed the pleats of his neck, the shallow sockets behind the ears, and for a moment, in that dim room, she could not help but see the face of her own son in the features of this boy, in the cupped chin with its off-center dimple, in the low cheekbones and full, fleshy lips, each a shared inheritance from their father. Bending close, anointing every crease and crevice of that face with the tip of her damp cloth, she felt the entirety of her loss as both love and emptiness—for her, two strands of the same cord—a deep, pained mourning for this child, for the children she had lost, for the children she might never have.
In a daze, and feeling suddenly exhausted, she climbed onto the bed, breathing in the soapy scent of the boy’s neck, pulling him close, feeling the heat and weight of him against her chest, and as she dozed off she thought she could sense him lifting, releasing, taking her with him into some bright place—heaven, she hoped—where the souls of children pulsed like sparks, lighting up the dark.
She was awakened by a noise in the hall—a nurse making her rounds, or maybe Beverly come to start her shift—but she did not move. She stared at the cracks in the plaster ceiling, feeling the knowledge rise in her, stirred by this breathing child in her arms, that despite everything that had been taken from her, despite all she had lost and could never have back, this emptiness inside her could be filled again.
She took the long way back, slowing as she passed the little cemetery on the ridge where Jack was buried. Though she did not stop—visiting a cemetery in the dead of night struck even her as a bit morbid and inappropriate—in her mind she called out to him and to her other two lost ones, told them no matter what happened she would not abandon them, they would always be loved, they could never be replaced.
When she pulled up in front of June’s the place was dark. She got out of the car, looked up for a second at the deep sky layered thick with stars and galaxies, tasted the dust of the road on her tongue. Before she could knock, the porch light came on. And there was June, one hand on the doorknob,
the other holding his glasses, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, freshly shaven, as if he had been waiting for her all along. The look of open expectation on his face nearly broke her heart.
“I can’t go with you,” she told him. “But I’d like to stay the night if you’d let me.” Something flared in his eyes and went out. He nodded, letting out a single, sharp breath, and opened the door wide.
After that night, she returned four times over the course of the next ten days. Each time he begged her to come with him, showed her maps of the places they might go: Mexico, British Columbia, California, anywhere she wanted. She listened, dreamed a little along with him, but made no commitments. At every visit she noticed more material and equipment missing, compressors and arc welders sold at auction, piles of lumber and rebar hauled off their piers. The house grew progressively emptier and more cave-like until it contained nothing but a bed, a refrigerator and a small chair and card table in the front room. The last time she went, a warm breezy night at the beginning of June, the place was abandoned, the Quonset huts dismantled and gone, nothing but two concrete pads and a few scraps sifted over with red dust, the desert already come to reclaim its own.