The End in All Beginnings

by John F. D. Taff

  He looked at me with a face full of disappointment. It was weary and defeated beyond his years, knowing failure and pain and some bigger loss, vague and undefined, hanging somewhere in the distance.

  “I can’t. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”

  He spoke it in a whisper, like a terrible, guarded secret or a magic phrase that, once uttered, can never be called back.

  I stood, with no reply on my lips, in my mind, in my heart, and helped him up. We put on our damp shirts and shoes, squelchy and reeking of the pond, and returned down the path and out the maw of the woods.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong with Charlie?” I asked my mom, later that night, as she passed by the open door of my room.

  I was already in bed. She hadn’t tucked me in or read to me or even told me to go to bed. She didn’t make me dinner or speak to me much that evening, for that matter. Since dad left, we no longer had that type of relationship. It was very close to no relationship at all. As if we, too, had left each other, even though we were still here.

  I saw her shadow hesitate outside my door. It struck me that she must have been dreading this question, or another like it, for a while.

  She turned to my door, eased it open. She didn’t come in.

  “Why?”

  I shrugged beneath my covers.

  “I dunno. He’s tired and sick all the time.”

  My mother mulled this over, probably weighing what little I knew against the danger of imparting even a little more knowledge.

  “Charlie’s…well, got some problems,” she said, her words slow and slurred. She’d been drinking beer alone that night, and I could smell her breath from where I lay.

  “But, hey, who doesn’t?” she said, trying to sound brighter, but barking out a harsh and bitter laugh. “It’s not like we don’t have our own problems, right?”

  By we, I knew she meant herself.

  And by problems, I knew she meant me.

  “Is he gonna be all right?”

  She snorted, but it sounded weak and defeated, and again, I thought her response was as much meant for her as for Charlie.

  “Shit, kid, I dunno.”

  Moving to leave, she stopped when I asked her a final question.

  “Can I help him?”

  She paused, half-turned from me, then flicked the light in the hall off, plunging us both into darkness.

  “Pray.”

  * * *

  I fell asleep thinking of my mother’s single word response.

  Pray?

  At that time, I’d last been in a church when my grandmother, my mom’s mother, died. She’d been a dour old Baptist, full of verse and venom, which she administered liberally to anyone within striking range.

  That my mother had married a Catholic—a Catholic!—became the reason for years of animosity directed at her. But it hardly mattered in reality. My mother’s two sisters and two brothers hadn’t married Catholics, yet received their full measure of my grandmother’s ire.

  I’d only ever been to church in the company of grandparents. My mother, soaked to the bone in Jesus’ blood three days a week while growing up, used my father’s Catholicism as an excuse to extricate herself from attending church altogether. My father, whose grasp on Catholicism could fairly be called tenuous at best, attended church only on Christmas and Easter.

  On occasion, each of my grandmothers would arrange to take my sister and me to church with them, at least until Marcia became old enough to say “No” and make it stick. When my father’s mom, Grandma Jean, took us, we were always freshly bathed, wearing our best clothes, teeth brushed, shoes shined, hair combed. These outings were, it seemed to me, more social than anything else. They were chances for her to show us off to friends, to take us to breakfast afterward, to show someone, whoever that might be, that she, at least, was not neglecting her grandchildren’s eternal souls.

  When my mom’s mom, Grandma Rebekah, took us, there was no breakfast or socializing. Going to church with her was like being escorted to the doctor for an inoculation against something dreadful and most likely life-threatening, like incipient Catholicism. I think if Grandma Jean had left us to our own devices, so would have Grandma Rebekah.

  These instances, while completely different in tone and scope from each other, never gave me any glimpses into the meaning of religion. I had no framework on which to build an idea of God beyond some great, bearded, toga-wearing, cloud-dwelling old man who, evidently, somehow, for some unknown reason, made everything and then became pretty pissed about the whole deal.

  It wasn’t so much whether I believed or disbelieved in God.

  I didn’t know enough about him one way or the other.

  So, pray to him?

  I barely even knew him, and I suspected that he felt similarly about me.

  And I’m supposed to ask him for a favor?

  I believed there must be a better way.

  * * *

  Entering the woods by myself was a little scary.

  It sometimes felt as if the woods were alive; a huge, sentient thing that would simply swallow me, lose me in its vastness.

  There were paths leading everywhere inside it, and we hadn’t—couldn’t—explore them all. Sometimes it felt as if it moved those paths, deliberately altered landmarks to confuse us, to keep us within it, wandering its shifting trails, lost forever.

  I’d gotten out of bed early that morning, dressed and eaten a quick, quiet breakfast alone, in a house that felt as aggrieved as my mother. In the garage, the heart of my dad’s abandoned kingdom—just as his recliner, which neither my mom nor I sat in, was his abandoned throne—I dumped the loose nuts and bolts from a five-pound can of Eight O’Clock coffee. I left the garage, still smelling of my dad’s absent car, my dad’s absence, and set off.

  I passed Charlie’s house on the way to the woods, noticed that his parents’ car was already gone. My heart gave a little twinge.

  With a peanut butter sandwich, a canteen filled with lime Kool-Aid, an apple and my empty coffee can, I parted the dark green curtains, stepped backstage.

  * * *

  A few hours later, and I had a coffee can literally packed with frogs and toads of all kinds. I even managed to snag a huge, slimy bullfrog weighing at least a pound. I immediately named him Armstrong. Holding him was like trying to grasp a slick, naked muscle, but he went into the can with the rest.

  I used a sharp stick to punch several air holes through the plastic lid, careful not to press too hard and injure the frogs. The entire can jumped and jostled, filled as it was with indignant amphibians.

  I washed my sticky hands in a clear part of the pond. Atop the rise, the bouncing can at my side, I gobbled my peanut butter sandwich and my apple, drained my canteen.

  My eyes closed and my head was filled with the drowsy red light of the sun shining through my lids. I thought of staying there for a while, resting my head, sleeping there. And I almost let it happen. Already, I could feel myself see-sawing down into sleep, like a leaf dropped from a tree.

  But the coffee can thumping against my thigh brought me back.

  I had to get home and find more comfortable—and more spacious—accommodations for the frogs.

  I had to get them ready to meet Charlie.

  Because I believed they would save him.

  * * *

  “Acute lymphocytic leukemia, if you’re interested.”

  We were in Charlie’s room later that day, sprawled on the floor, reading comics. He had them all—The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, The Invincible Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, The Avengers, The Mighty Thor, Dr. Strange, The Uncanny X-Men. And, of course, The Amazing Spider-Man.

  I was several pages into a Marvel Team-Up pairing The Thing with Spidey when he spoke those words.

  “What?”

  He smiled at the comfortable familiarity of my response.

  “That’s why I can’t go outside just yet. I got my first drugs today, and my
mother wants me to stay inside.”

  I swallowed, looked away from a panel where The Thing was telling the villain, in his gravelly, Brooklyn voice, that it was clobberin’ time.

  “Oh,” I replied. “What’s…um…what’s that?”

  “My body’s making too many little blood cells,” he said, matter-of-factly paging through an issue of Luke Cage: Hero for Hire. “It’s a cancer.”

  My tongue seemed stuck to the roof of my mouth. My throat felt clogged with shards of glass. I didn’t know what to say, how to react, what to do.

  So, I tried to follow his lead, flipped the page of the comic I was no longer reading. A New York building was collapsing onto the villain, who’d been knocked into it by a great orange, rocky fist.

  But I couldn’t focus, couldn’t make the comic book words come together in any way that made sense any more than I could Charlie’s words.

  “I got the frogs,” I croaked through my sharp throat and numb tongue.

  He forgot the comics, snapped his head to me.

  “You did? Really?”

  His eyes, which had looked flat and dull, pushed into their sockets, now actually seemed to protrude, to shine with life. His cheeks flushed, and his mouth moved for a moment around syllables that were unspoken.

  “Yeah,” I continued. I wanted to bury his earlier words, what he’d said, what he’d meant, with words of my own. To cover them with talk of frogs and astronauts and comics and whatever until both of us forgot what it was he had said.

  Forgot that he was dying.

  “About fourteen of ‘em. They’re in coffee cans right now on my front porch. My mom wouldn’t let me bring them inside.”

  “Didja poke holes in the lids, because…”

  “I’m not stupid, dillweed. I know frogs need to breathe.”

  He closed his mouth, pursed his lips. His mind was racing, I knew. His breathing came heavy through his nostrils.

  “Okay, okay. We’ve got to plan. To make a plan. Get everything ready. We need to get started right away, because they won’t…”

  His voice trailed off as his eyes met mine.

  Live long…

  He didn’t say it, but it hung there over his head, like a comic book hero’s words.

  This was probably the only time I appreciated Charlie’s mom interrupting us.

  His bedroom door, already cracked, flew open wide, and Mrs. Greenwell strode in, eyes narrowed and scanning the bedroom. She did this quite often, looking shocked and vaguely surprised, as if she hadn’t been altogether sure that this door actually led here. Then, her look faded quickly to one of mild disappointment tinged with whatever passed for embarrassment with her.

  Years later, I realized that she expected—no, wanted—to catch us at something, smoking pot or lying around naked paging through Playboy or selling nuclear secrets to the Soviets. That she never found us doing anything more interesting than reading comics or playing Mouse Trap was, I think, a great disappointment to her.

  “Oh, well, Brian,” she stammered, lurching to a halt halfway into the room. “You’re still here.”

  I smiled vacantly up at her from the floor.

  “Well, ahh, yes, Charles has had a tiring day today, and he needs to get some rest, you understand. Some quiet time.”

  She looked down at the slick of comic books spread across the carpet of Charlie’s room, and the upturned corners of her thin, severe mouth drooped down to, what was in all probability, their normal position.

  She didn’t like comic books any better than my mother. The difference, though, other than the money to buy them, was that she was unable to deny them to Charlie because he was—

  “He knows.”

  Her eyes—hell, my eyes—snapped wide, drilled into him.

  “He knows what, Charles?” she asked, blinking, hands playing with the neckline of her sundress.

  “About me. About the doctors.”

  Some of the tension in her body sloughed away at that, thinking I knew this and no more.

  “Oh, Charles, now is that really the kind of thing two young boys need to be—”

  “About the acute lymphocytic leukemia.”

  I saw, I know I saw, the whites of Mrs. Greenwell’s eyes as they rolled back in her head. What she’d been saying died in her throat, faded softly like a radio slowly being turned off.

  “Charles!” she breathed, though it was weak and more a force of habit. “Such language.”

  “It’s okay,” he smiled up at her. “I just thought he should know. And I just thought you should know that he knows.”

  Her face, usually so fixed, so set, fell into what I was sure, had this occurred before a mirror, she would see as a distressing network of lines, creases and odd, pulsing veins.

  “Well,” she creaked. “I think it’s time for Brian to go. Perhaps if you’re feeling well tomorrow, he can visit.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. Then, he scooped up a pile of comics, straightened them, handed them to me as I got to my feet. The top one showed the Sub-Mariner erupting from the sea in a spray of foam.

  I took them, told Charlie I’d see him tomorrow, edged around his passive, unmoving mother and out the door.

  And I felt something for her. Sympathy, I guess, or perhaps pity or as close to either of those as an 11-year-old can get.

  With me, Charlie seemed to be using the knowledge of his illness like bird crumbs; hints dropped at appropriate moments to lead me somewhere without overwhelming me.

  But with his mother, Charlie used it as a weapon.

  He wanted her to know that I knew.

  He wanted it to hurt her.

  I left his house clutching the slippery stack of comics. I wondered where I’d hide them from my mother, who was in the living room when I came in. She was wearing a wig, taken from a supposedly “secret” box at the back of her closet, a tight blouse, a mini-skirt and thigh-high go-go boots.

  I stopped, frozen in the doorway, as much by the sight of her as by the need to hide the comics.

  But she hardly even turned to see me. She looked at herself in the small mirror above the davenport, daubed at her face.

  “Oh, good, you’re back. I’m going out tonight. Gotta date, Brian-baby.”

  I nodded in silence. This was not the mother I’d grown accustomed to over the last few months.

  “There’s hot dogs and beans in the fridge for dinner, but don’t eat them all. They’ve got to last all week.”

  She pursed her lips, applied lipstick, blotted it with a piece of tissue.

  Her eyes found mine in the mirror.

  “Oh, yeah, your father called and said he was coming by to see you. Maybe he’ll even take you out for a hamburger or something. The hot dogs are just in case he’s still an asshole.”

  * * *

  I dragged a limp french fry through a puddle of ketchup pooled on the paper wrapper of my hamburger and tried to decide whether my father was an asshole. I wasn’t sure. It seemed my mother had given me a fairly weighty responsibility in deciding if an adult—my father, no less—was an asshole.

  Still.

  Which implied, of course, that he had been one before.

  I couldn’t decide. My dad, when he was around, was more a problematic equation, one that I’d never devoted any real effort in solving. The few functions I’d previously assigned to him—paying bills, putting food on the table and clothes on our backs—seemed to be working just as well with him gone as they did when he was here. If this were an actual equation, then, he’d be a zero.

  “So, what’ve you been up to?” he asked, watching me eat. He hadn’t taken more than a bite or two of his own meal. “How’s school?”

  I know my brow must have knitted in confused annoyance at this question.

  “School’s been out for a month.”

  He nodded, his eyes closing slowly. I watched his face, lined with unspoken stress, fractured with failures both real and perceived, break into a sort of brave, crooked smile.

  “Sure
, I know that. Just forgot, I guess.”

  Another long, awkward pause in a meal that was mostly an extended, awkward pause. He poked at his fries, took a long, gurgling sip from his own soda, sighed.

  “How’s your mom?”

  I knew then, knew in a flash of thought, knew in a way no child should know, that this visit, this meal had nothing to do with me, his missing me or loving me.

  I was simply a line, a road that led to my mother and whatever emotions still lingered in the ghost of their dead relationship—jealousy, pity (self or otherwise), the longing for what was and is no longer.

  In that regard, this meal was no different than a drunk phone call or a late night drive by the house, slowing to see what lights were still burning.

  I was the picture he couldn’t bear to throw away, the phone number he couldn’t cross out.

  The face, fogged by memory, he just couldn’t forget.

  I was just a way for him to conjure her.

  And I hated him for that with a bright, flaring hatred that seemed so naked to me that I blushed, feeling the heat in my cheeks.

  “She never believed in me, you know.”

  I brought my eyes to his, saw the sadness there, going deep, deep, as if the backs of his eyes were miles distant. That look, at once so pitiable yet also so inexplicably loathsome, struck a chord in me.

  As much as he’d hurt my mother, damaged her pride in some way I was too young to discern, she’d hurt him, too.

  And her hurt cut deeper, affected him at a much more basic level. It seemed to drain a vital essence from him, deprived him, in some way, of himself.

  “If only she’d believed in me. That’s all it would have taken. Just an ounce of belief that I was good enough, that I amounted to something.”

  He took a small bite of his hamburger, chewed it mechanically, swallowed it.

  “You believe in me, don’t you, Brian?”

  That was not a question.

  Seemingly everyone, everything, wanted or needed my belief these days.

  But I didn’t stop to think about my answer. If I had, I think I’d still be sitting there today.