Sunset stands in front of me. “You can do it. Look straight ahead. Memorize where you are. Tell me when you need help. Take charge.” Out of the blue, she says, “There are no fairy-tale endings, Frank. Just hard work.”
We keep going. This is my downtown, my neighborhood. Not all these people hate me. Sunset runs into an old friend. “Pull over,” she says. “Take five.” The three of them reminisce.
Murphy’s Law: you will always see the very people you want to avoid on your first day out. Mine are just ahead. Harry and Jocelyn, arm in arm, walking and laughing, are headed in my direction. She throws her hair back. He drapes his arm on her shoulder. They don’t see me.
“Sunset.” I try hard to smile, but my eyes feel heavy, and she won’t stop talking to her friend. My smile is so forced that it turns to stone.
“Sunset.” I try to get her attention, but she’s midstory, and the three of them are laughing.
“Sunset.”
She finally looks. “Are you cold?”
“Let’s go,” I say. “Now.”
Harry and Jocelyn stop in front of the chair.
Too late.
“Hi, Frank.” At the sound of my name, Sunset and Victoria flank the chair. They introduce themselves, then step to the side to continue their conversation.
“How are you?” Harry asks. His hair is trim. He is not wearing anything with a Yankees logo.
“Fine.”
“You look good.”
“Thanks. You, too.” We sound like old ladies.
Jocelyn fiddles with her bracelet. She adjusts the collar of her jacket.
“Hi, Jocelyn,” I say. “How’s it going?”
“Okay.”
She and Harry drop their arms. They stand side by side, staring at me. Jocelyn elbows him. “Great, really. I got into Skidmore. Early decision.”
Harry’s face remains blank.
“What about you?” I ask. “Have you heard?”
“Yeah,” Harry says. Long pause. “I’m going to Ithaca.” He steps to the side.
“Not Vassar?” I ask. It was always Vassar. Vassar and NYU. Or Vassar and Bucknell. Or Lehigh. I try not to sound surprised.
“I wish we had some snow,” Jocelyn says. “We always have snow by now.”
“Yeah. It’s weird,” Harry says. “I can’t remember the last time it was this warm.”
Even weather talk is difficult.
Sunset and Victoria return. “I’ll give you a call, Harry. I got a voice-activated phone. Soon.”
Jocelyn stares at my chair. He looks at a piece of blue sky. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.” Together, they walk away.
He was not the one who pushed me away.
As we motor along, I half expect him to charge up behind me. Yell. Call me a putz, the way he used to when we fought. Or apologize for not calling, for being a body, for having a girlfriend. What do they call it … survivor’s guilt? Why doesn’t he have it? Why doesn’t he feel how hard this is for me?
But, instead, he says nothing. He has moved on.
Sunset won’t take me home, even when I beg.
“Not yet, bud,” she says. “I’m starved.” Sunset motions to me to make a left down a quiet side street. “Let’s go get some lunch.”
Victoria shakes her head. “No can do,” she says. “I gotta bolt. I have another patient.” She scrunches her nose. “Stroke, diabetic. He’s a whiner. All he does is complain. Not like you, Frank.” She winks.
It’s a setup.
“I want to go home.” She can’t possibly want to feed me in public.
“Sorry. You need to get used to people looking at you, and people need to get used to seeing people like you out and about,” Sunset says.
“Sounds like a lousy idea.”
“Sounds like a great idea. Don’t you think your mother would like to get out now and again?”
Duh. “Okay,” I say. “Feed me.”
Sunset smiles. “Great. Let’s go to Mike’s.”
Mike’s.
My favorite hangout.
She’s lost it. At Mike’s, the aisles are narrow and the tables are undersized, and I’ve never walked in there without recognizing half a dozen people. “I don’t want to go to Mike’s.” I want to go to a fast-food restaurant with take-out service and wheelchair-accessible aisles—preferably in the next town, where no one will know me, and we don’t have to worry about running into any more former best friends.
Sunset shakes her head. “We’re going to Mike’s. Your mother told me it was your favorite place. I heard all about your cheesecake fetish and how you like your potatoes crisp.” She smiles. “Besides, they are expecting us. I called ahead. They’re holding the big table. Don’t worry.”
Great. Thanks, Sunset. Can’t wait.
Sunset has to tip my chair way back to manage the big step up into the front door. In the foyer, a million Mikes greet us. Every wall is covered with pictures of Mike the First with famous people who loved his cooking: Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior, and even President Kennedy. Mike is always standing front and center, facing the camera, chest out, big smile, cigarette in one hand, the other arm around the star. All the pictures, even the new ones, featuring today’s Mike—a big, burly guy with jet-black hair—are in black and white, and they’re all signed, Whenever I come to New England, I eat at Mike’s.
There are banners at the front counter. Trophies, too. Mooretown’s Culinary Landmark for 40 years. Voted First in the Region: Best Breakfast.
Mike himself jogs to the door. Patty, the head waitress, follows on his heels, and together, they usher us in.
“Hi, Frank. Good to see you,” Patty says. She puts her arms on my arms in a pseudo-embrace. “I’ve been serving him eggs, bacon, and home fries since he was a boy.” Sunset nods.
“She gave me my first Pokemon cards,” I add.
Together we move into the restaurant. Even though it isn’t as crowded as it could be, there are enough people here to notice that the room is suddenly silent. “Sit down right over there,” Mike says. Patty slaps him.
“It’s okay,” I say. I like Patty and Mike.
We follow her down the aisle to the empty corner table. People avoid making eye contact. They look at their eggs and potatoes, their pancakes and sandwiches as I motor past.
One little boy stands up in his seat and looks right at me. “Can I have a ride?” he asks. His mother yanks his arm and sits him back in the booth. “Shhh,” she says. “Don’t be rude.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I whisper to Sunset.
She sits down and opens the menu. “What did you say was good?”
“It’s too hard.”
“Should I get pancakes?”
“I want to leave.”
“So go. I’m staying.”
“You know I…”
I don’t say “can’t,” because Patty arrives.
“What’ll it be?” Patty looks at my motionless hands. I can tell she is trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to eat.
“Pancakes,” Sunset says. “With a side order of fruit.”
“The usual,” I say. The big breakfast. Eggs, cakes, potatoes, and sausage. If I’m going to be humiliated, I might as well get the works.
The food arrives in record time. Sunset doesn’t have to ask for a refill of coffee. It just comes. Need more jelly? Syrup? Butter? Patty has never been faster.
“Great service,” Sunset says. “I had heard they were slow.”
“They usually are slow.” Earth to Sunset: They want us out of here. They want people to eat, not stare at the freak show.
She spoons the food into my mouth in small bites, in equal proportions, so I get egg and sausage, alternating with potato and pancake, in every bite.
The boy who wanted the ride stops by. “Can’t you feed yourself yet? I can tie my shoes. Are you in special ed?”
Before I can think of an answer, his mother jerks him away, nearly dislocating his arm. “Sorry,” she says to Sunset.
“That’s okay,” I tell her back.
We are almost done when an old man approaches our table. He places a pamphlet on my lap. “It’s God’s world,” he says, his eyes slightly glazed. “Not man’s. God’s.” And he walks away.
“That guy is a nut job,” Sunset says, shaking her head. She puts a twenty on the table as he walks back down the aisle. “Crazy.”
I hope so.
I used to think about God the same way I thought about those public service announcements you see all the time on TV. This is a test. This is only a test. If this was a real emergency, you would be directed to do something or other, but nobody does, because that long chime is ringing, and we turn the volume down or go into the next room for a Coke.
Know what I mean?
God was a cheap construction made up by people like my mother who were just waiting for an emergency that was never going to come. I never bought the creation thing, the parting of the seas, the water into wine. Science made a lot more sense. Laws over rituals. Rules over ethics.
Funny, now that I could use a miracle, I see how right I was, how absolutely ridiculous the notion is.
In the hospital, Mom had a whole bunch of church buddies who came and prayed with her. They made an assembly line of prayer so that every minute of the day, God was getting a message for Frank.
Do they think that one more prayer would have done it? Was there a buzzer that went off too fast? If so, why did they give up?
If there really was a God, there’d have to be a “life mulligan”—a holy do-over. You could use it only once, so you’d have to save it for a really important moment. Like when you are driving on a side street and you’ve forgotten to turn on your lights, and your girl is holding onto you, and you can’t think of anything else. Then you could use it. Or even better, you could wait until you feel the car swerve, and hear the thud and the smack. Then, right before your girlfriend’s life ended, you could shout, “Life mulligan!” and it would all go back to normal. No one would die. No one would end up in the hospital. No one’s neck would break in two.
The Steins are Jewish. They buried Meredith thirty-one hours after she died.
* * *
“Do you believe this is God’s world?” I ask Sunset, to keep the conversation going. Suddenly, I’m not so anxious to go home.
“I don’t believe in organized religion,” Sunset says, like I couldn’t have predicted that a mile away. “I do believe in community. In people helping each other.” She looks at the pamphlet the old man left. “All this bullshit is just there to make us less scared. But really, we should focus on what we can do here.”
“So you don’t think I deserve this? That God is teaching me some sort of lesson?”
“No. I don’t. I think you got the raw end of a deal, Frank. What happened to you sucks. I hope that science is going to come up with something big for you someday. I really do.”
We sit in silence. It feels good to hear someone say it. It sucks. Being a head sucks.
“Do you know who Christopher Reeve was?” she asks.
“The guy in the old Superman movies. The therapists at the hospital told me about him.”
“He fell off his horse and broke his neck. Sustained a high cervical injury. But he never gave up. He worked for people like you the rest of his life. He raised money and awareness. He worked out like a maniac. You should look him up on the Net. His story might inspire you. He learned to move his little finger.”
His little finger. I want to cry.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Sunset nods, stands up, and adjusts my joystick into the on position. “Yeah,” Sunset says. “He died. We all die someday.”
week five
Believe it or not, there are still people who want to talk about me. Today, www.Quadkingonthenet.com continues to retrace my day in town. You can hear about my meal, what I ate, even what Sunset and I talked about. I’m pissed at Patty; she’s the last person I expected to post.
Serveseggs: I wanted to give him a bib, but they started talking about God, so I didn’t.
econboy889: I saw FM F2F. I was going to give him the finger, but when I got up close, he looked totally pathetic. He uses HIS CHIN to move his chair. I’d rather be dead.
Serveseggs: He can’t feed himself either. All he did was talk, open his mouth and chew.
Anonymous: This town makes me sick. All you people need to find something else to talk about. Frank Marder needs to figure out a way to live. We should be kind to him.
Rowergirl: FFW! He shouldn’t be allowed 2 go out. IIMAD2U, there are people who are doing experiments on jerks like him. They’re making computer chips to put in the brain. He could walk again. It makes me want to puke.
econboy889: Rowergirl: R U busy 2 nite? LMIRL!
“Frank, we’re late.” My mother stands next to me at the computer, and for a moment reads with me. “Who do you think Anonymous is?”
“It’s not you?” I ask.
She laughs. “No. Sorry. Maybe it’s Harry.” Her mouth turns serious. “You really should call him.” She shoots me a maternal look and checks her watch. “Turn it off. We have to be at the hospital in half an hour.”
I secretly bet myself an arm and a leg that someone from the hospital will post my checkup results.
“They want to see how we’re doing. You never know, honey,” she says. She hasn’t lost hope. “They might want to accelerate your physical therapy.”
Maybe Anonymous is Harry. Harry is the kind of guy to do that. Stick up for me, even though we’re not talking. Maybe she’s right; I should call him, tell him to come over, that I’m done being an asshole. Or maybe not. Maybe the best thing I can do for my friend is forget him.
I make a decision, and then bam, it all feels wrong.
I miss Harry. I need to apologize.
There’s no place like home, no place like home. The rehab wing of the hospital looks exactly the same. Nurses peek out of rooms and behind counters to say hello to me. There are no people looking around me, wondering about me; these are not the people who write about me in their spare time.
Zoe jogs over and tousles my hair. “Hey, Frank, looking good.”
I wish I could wave; I wish I could shake her hand. She would freak out!
My mother gives her a big embrace. A few other nurses see us and come over to say hello, too. Mom clutches her purse with both hands. “How are you?” she asks each nurse. “So nice to see you.” Zoe squeezes her hands, yes, yes, everything is great, my life is great, work is fine, yes, yes, it is nice to see you, too.
The crowd is breaking up when Cecilia emerges. She breaks into a run and almost falls into my lap; she stops herself just in time. She squeezes my neck with her tiny warm hands and smiles just the way she did every day that I was here. “Frank! Anything to report on this fine and most magnificent day?”
“I knew you’d say that!”
She takes a step back, like I’m a piece of art to admire. Then she closes in for a big hug. Strange, her scent has changed; now she smells like tropical fruit. Her hair looks pretty today, too: smooth, no kinks, and her teeth don’t seem so big or yellow. She thrusts her hand in my face.
“The doctor will—”
“Not the nails, Frank. Look at my finger. My ring finger.”
I smile. “So, Dr. Love finally popped the question?” I ask.
She nods, waves the diamond in Mom’s face, and jumps up and down. “Last week,” she says, “at Serendipity.”
“Congratulations.”
Life goes on. One month ago, Cecilia was single, she was tacky, she talked too loud, smiled too much. Now she looks lovely. She is happy, grown up, moving on with her life. I am not different, I have not changed, I am frozen in time and space.
“You look great,” she says. “In for a checkup?”
“Drock,” I say, smiling. “Here to see the man.”
“Good luck,” she says, on her feet and moving away faster than I can roll. She waves. Sh
e’s got a whole new set of paralyzed guys in need. “You should stop in 103 and see Richard.”
“Richard?”
“Freeberg,” she says, like I should know something. “He’s back.”
* * *
Freeberg isn’t just back, he’s a complete C7. Not a whole lot better than me.
He doesn’t look surprised when I motor into the room. He just stares at me, chair to chair, quad to quad. He manages a flick of the wrist. Yeah, he’s still on top.
“Who told you?” he asks.
“Cecilia. I came in for a checkup. I didn’t know.”
He says nothing.
“What happened?”
“They dragged their asses on that car. Every time I called, they said the same thing: any day, man, any day. Yeah, sure. I figured I was never going to get it.” He looks past me to the clock. “I took matters into my own hands.”
He stares at his limp hands. I stare at them, too. He had hands. He had working hands and a working dick—practically an entire working body. But now he doesn’t.
“Took out my dad’s old Firebird. Used my cane to work the clutch. It was going great. But then I messed up and smashed into a tree. I didn’t think…”
“Were you trying to…” I don’t finish. Heads talk a lot about death—how can you not? It’s the only way out. I can’t pretend I haven’t thought about it, but I never go further. I never ask … except … What I did to Harry stinks. There’s no excuse. I should have apologized.
“Nah,” he says. “I didn’t want to off myself. I was just having fun.” He starts crying. “Just wanted to take a drive, feel like a man.” He shrugs.
A guy with a helmet raps on the door as he walks down the hall singing “New York, New York” at the top of his lungs.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Vincent Orifice.”
“‘Orifice,’ as in…”
“Yeah. I call him ‘The Hole.’” Freeberg smirks. “My new best bud. Guy was a rapist, convicted. He was going away, too. The whole thing went down while we were in here.” He shakes his head. “Guy was the worst kind. Raped his own kid. Got eight to twelve.”
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