Nathan in Spite of Himself

by Bernie Silver

  Was he serious?

  Obviously I hadn’t gotten through to him yet, and was almost too tired to try anymore.

  “How high’s the plane fly?” I asked. Not that it mattered. Ten feet off the ground or ten thousand, I’d soil my pants either way.

  “About twelve thousand feet,” McCloud said. “That’ll give you plenty of time to appreciate the scenery.”

  Right.

  Now I wondered how I’d gotten myself into this corner, where I had only two choices: jump to my death or look lily-livered.

  McCloud must have read my expression. “You still think you’re gonna go splat?”

  I admitted I did.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s no skin off my ass if you don’t dive, or even if you don’t do a story on us. Sure we can use the publicity, but we’ll survive without it. The thing is, I want you to dive for your own good.”

  If selling used cars didn’t work out, this guy could tickle them silly on the borscht circuit.

  Or open a business reading minds.

  “You’re wondering how diving’ll be good for you,” he said. “Okay, here’s how. Fear is bad for you because it prevents you from living your life. And doing only one thing you’re afraid of doing can help you conquer all your other fears.” He put out his cigarette. “And I sense this might be that thing for you.”

  Now I had to ask myself: what if McCloud were right, and skydiving could help me vanquish my fears, of which there were too many to count? But could one death-defying act accomplish that? There was only one way to find out as far as I could see.

  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  McCloud’s face lit up and he turned his hand palm up. I gave him five, as enthusiastically as I could, then took down some details, such as date, time and directions.

  Having closed the sale, my guest grabbed his crutches with one hand and the edge of the desk with the other and pushed himself up. “You won’t regret this,” he said. “You’ve never experienced anything like it.”

  No doubt. But the question was, would I survive the experience?

  #

  Mom served up a large platter of overcooked brisket, the same dish she made every Sunday when I visited my parents for dinner. Invariably the meat proved dry and tasteless, close kin to her roast chicken.

  The three of us helped ourselves to the entrée, then to mashed potatoes and boiled carrots, which were no prizewinners either.

  “So, what’s new?” my mom asked.

  To tell them, or not to tell them.

  All week I’d debated whether to inform my mom and dad I that planned to go skydiving, and so far I’d reached no conclusion. On the one hand, a son should notify his parents of such a thing, if only to prepare them for his demise. On the other hand, their gottenius and got-in-himmels would only raise my anxiety level, assuming it could rise any higher. Now I had to make a decision.

  As happened so often in my life, filial duty won out. “Um, I do have something to tell you.”

  If they knew that preamble like I knew that preamble, they’d know enough to brace themselves.

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “Yes, what?” Dad echoed.

  “I’m, uh, going skydiving next month.”

  “What?” they reiterated, this time in unison.

  “I’m, you know, going skydiving.”

  “You know?” Dad said. “Meaning we know? How would we know such a thing?”

  “Skydiving,” Mom said. “That’s where you fall out of an airplane, yes?”

  I regretted her verb choice but chose not to quibble. “Yes, but with a parachute. That’s important to keep in mind.”

  My dad gave me a look. “Well okay. All this time we thought you were sane. A little eccentric maybe, but of relatively sound mind. So now we know different.”

  Finally, my father and I agreed on something. I was nuts.

  “Al, he’s kidding,” said my mom the optimist. “Can’t you see that? He’s playing a little joke on us.”

  She searched my face, maybe for confirmation of her hypothesis.

  Dad kept his eyes on me while addressing my mom. “You mean like the time he told us he was going to join the Navy, and then he went ahead and did it. That kind of joke?”

  Mom’s face blanched.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” my dad asked.

  “Yes, I’m serious.”

  “Gotteniu … Got in himmel,” Mom said, not unexpectedly.

  Dad’s gaze turned laser-like. “Maybe you could explain to us why you’re doing such a meshugeh thing.”

  “Yes, please,” my mom said. “We want to understand.”

  Funny, I wanted to understand too. Was I really doing this to overcome my fears? If so, how did I explain that to my parents, whose biggest fear was going without grandchildren.

  I stalled by taking a bite of brisket, which proved a poor choice of delaying tactic. I rose and retrieved a bottle of ketchup from the fridge, then returned and emptied half of it onto my meat. I tried another bite.

  Better.

  While chewing I devised an answer to their question.

  “I’m going skydiving so I can write about the experience. Writing articles for the Gazette is my job.”

  “Ah, I see,” Dad said. “You’re going to kill yourself so you can write an article about it, which you won’t be able to do because you’ll be dead.”

  Clearly, further discussion of this subject would prove fruitless, so I offered a final, irrefutable argument for doing such a meshugeh thing.

  “Look, I’m going through with this no matter what, so don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  “I wouldn’t try to talk you out of anything,” Dad said. “It’s your life and if you want to end it, that’s up to you.”

  “Al, stop it!” Mom demanded. “He doesn’t need any encouragement from you to kill himself. You’re so morbid sometimes.”

  “Who’s morbid? I’m only facing facts. Our son is suicidal.”

  Mom pushed her plate away. “Between the two of you I’ve lost my appetite.”

  I felt bad about that so I tried to reassure her, as well as myself.

  “Hey, it’ll be perfectly safe. People jump out of planes all the time without getting killed.”

  “Oi, I’m going to be sick.” Mom sipped her Faygo orange to settle her stomach.

  This apparently worked because she resumed eating.

  “And you’re doing this nutty thing next month?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Well, if you come back alive, you’ll tell us all about it.”

  With that he cleaned his plate, then along with mom cleared the table and piled the dishes in the sink. His chores disposed of, Dad filled three large bowls with Metropolitan ice cream.

  About halfway through dessert he posed another question. “Will you also be flying the plane, or will you have an accomplice on this suicide mission?”

  The question merited no answer so I offered none. Instead, I told my parents that I’d be jumping at a respectable skydiving school with topnotch instructors and seasoned pilots. I hoped.

  “Good, good,” Dad said. “Perhaps the odds of your survival are more favorable than I thought.”

  Mom shook a menacing finger at him. “If our son dies, you’ll regret such talk. Besides, he won’t die. He’ll live to marry a nice Jewish girl and present us with lovely grandchildren.” She smiled and patted my hand.

  The chances of my survival having been adjusted upward, Dad joined Mom in planning my family. I let them have their fun while I thought about love and marriage and children. Being married had its disadvantages, but it also offered a surefire way of getting laid, especially if your wife wanted a large clutch of kids.

  Driving home, I was so absorbed in the possibility of readily available sex that not once did I think about my upcoming swan dive.

  Well, maybe once.

  Chapter 60

  Rather than keep you in suspense I’ll cut to the chase, deno
uement, conclusion, punch line, or whatever you want to call the upshot of my commitment to kill myself. I did it. I don’t mean I killed myself. I mean I did jump from an airplane and I did come out alive. So here I am to tell you about it.

  I don’t recall all the details of that day because I spent part of it in a haze, but I do remember some things. The date was October 4, 1965. I started out at 8:05 in the morning and took the I-96 to Farmington. Those two things I recall distinctly. I also remember enjoying, for a while anyway, the verdant fields and vibrant fall colors that festooned the route. But somewhere along the way I began running a film in my head, of me plummeting to earth and smashing headlong into the ground. That’s when the fog rolled in, maybe to protect me against my imagination. I do recollect some other things, though, and I’ll relate them as best I can.

  Upon arriving at the school I thought of turning around and going home, but that was out of the question because of the stunt I’d pulled the previous week—to prevent me from doing just that, retreating. In an act of pure idiocy, I revealed my skydiving intentions to Wonderman, Sheldon, Rachel, Ellen, Jane Bartolo, Phil Doppler, the Gazette’s cleaning crew, and of course its readers, whom I informed of my plans through a weekly column I’d started last month. This meant that if I turned tail and ran I’d die anyway, only of embarrassment instead of a caved-in cranium. As a result, rather than doing a U-turn I rolled into Ripcord’s postage-stamp lot, then parked and started my dead man’s walk. All too soon I reached a clapboard building, from the eaves of which hung a wooden sign engraved with Ripcord Skydiving School. I opened the front door a crack and peered inside. A dozen or so people were milling about in a room the size of Texas. Most appeared terror-stricken, or maybe I was projecting. At any rate, I entered with caution.

  I remember that the students varied in age, size, appearance and degree of enthusiasm, and that the two instructors resembled Ken and Barbie. The pair showed us how to don our jumpsuits, strap on our prepackaged parachutes, dive out of an airplane and, not least of all, land in one piece. It was late morning—or was it early afternoon?—before we finally trudged out the back door and boarded the Cessna aircraft that would whisk us into the wild blue yonder. When Ken gave me the high sign signaling it was my turn to dive, I stumbled to the open door and, ignoring McCloud’s advice, looked down at the acres of space between me and the ground. My stomach did somersaults but I dove anyway.

  Now here’s something else I distinctly recall. Slowly descending through space, I was thrilled, and I mean thrilled, to see my parachute billowing above me. The static line had worked, thank God, or at least thank someone or something. I hesitate to say this, but on my trip down I sensed a presence of some kind. I had no idea who or what—Ellen’s God, whom she insisted could be heard in the silence, or something else, like another product of my imagination. But rather than agonize over who or what was or wasn’t present, I let myself enjoy the peaceful quiet that had replaced, however temporarily, the ungodly racket of everyday life.

  After hitting the ground with my feet and not my head I was so ecstatic I fell on my ass, twisting my right ankle in the process. I recall sitting there, my collapsed parachute fluttering all around me, until the pain subsided. After several failed attempts to get up, I wobbled to my feet, gathered my chute and hobbled toward the Ripcord building visible in the distance. But don’t feel sorry for me. I mean about the hobbling. If you want to know the truth, I viewed my injury as a badge of honor, as living proof that I’d taken a chance, spread my wings and flown into space. Maybe I’d even encountered something.

  As in Something.

  Chapter 61

  The day after my heroic feat, I decided to do something else unusual, for me anyway. I set out to prove that, contra Sheldon, I could brag as well as the next guy. I mean, I went full bore, informing nearly everyone within earshot that I’d dived from an airplane and landed on my feet, kind of. Few people seemed terribly impressed by this achievement, and some, who suspected I might be nuts when I first told them about my plans, said they were sure of it now.

  Take my dad. “We’re glad you’re alive,” he said, “but we wish you were sane too. What woman will marry someone who jumps out of an airplane for no good reason? And if you find one who’s willing, what about your children—our grandchildren? Kids inherit their father’s traits, you know. Why you’re so meshugeh is beyond me, since I’m of sound mind and body. Or at least of sound mind.”

  Rachel didn’t question my sanity again, but neither did she give me due credit. “All right, you’re alive, mazel tov,” she said. “But what have you accomplished? What have you proved? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sometimes I wonder about you, Nate Rubin.” This we had in common, since I wondered about me too, only more often than sometimes.

  Most Gazette readers kept their opinions to themselves, or at least they didn’t share them with me. Among the exceptions was an elderly gentleman who called the day after my post-jump column appeared and, in a voice gnarled with age, read me the riot act, concluding with, “When you get as old as me, son, maybe you’ll have a little more respect for human life, including your own.” Maybe, but I doubted it.

  A member of the cleaning crew, one Jonas P. Jones, was the first person to praise my derring-do. “You be one brave muthafuckah, yes-suh. You couldn pay me nuff tuh do what y’all done, no-suh. But ah sho does admire you fo it, ah do. So gimmee five, mah li’l man.” Which I did.

  I informed Jane Bartolo last, hoping to impress the woman despite her initial response to my plans, which went something like, “Are you fucking out of your mind?” After that she delivered a bristling lecture on risking one’s life to no good purpose. But maybe now that I’d taken the risk and survived, she, like Jonas, would admire me for it. And maybe now that I was feeling brave, I’d ask her out. As you know, from the moment she first served me a beer and a smile I’d harbored a tiny smidgen of hope that Jane Bartolo would, for whatever reason, go out with me someday. And maybe events were conspiring to make that happen.

  I took a break from my Wednesday all-nighter to visit Mario’s and inform Jane I’d done it, I’d skydived. She was drying a batch of newly washed glasses when I began my account, and after I finished she put down the towel and looked at me with what I hoped was admiration. “I still think you’re nuts, but you’ve got guts. I’ll give you that.” She also gave me one of her luminescent smiles. “Yeah, I gotta say, it takes balls to do what you did.”

  Such praise emboldened me to take that other risk. “Let’s celebrate.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let’s celebrate,” I repeated.

  “You’re kidding.”

  That didn’t sound good, but being a ballsy kind of guy, I plunged ahead. “No, I’m not kidding. Let’s celebrate.”

  “Are you asking me out?” She did not seem displeased by the idea, and in fact after placing her elbows on the bar offered me another luminous smile.

  In return I gave her a half-assed grin. “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “No … yes. I mean yes, I’m asking you out.”

  “After all this time, you’re finally making a move?”

  Before I could ponder that one, she said, “Never mind. Yes, let’s celebrate.”

  Overjoyed and maybe a little euphoric, I raised my Bud in a toast. Jane straightened and clinked the bottle with a newly dried glass.

  “Salut.”

  “Le’chayim.”

  Stepping back, she asked, “How we gonna celebrate?”

  I pictured us naked in bed, which threw me off course. “I … we could … maybe …” I suggested.

  “Yeah, I suppose we could, but why don’t I make us dinner instead. A real Italian meal, better than Mario’s best.”

  “At home? I mean, in your house?”

  “No, in Belle Isle Park, so the muggers can join us.”

  I had nothing to say to that comment, which I so richly deserved.

  Jane’s eyes and voice soft
ened. “I’m sorry. Seems I’m always giving you a hard time. I don’t know why. You must bring something out in me.”

  I thought of Sheldon and Rachel and their recent sarcastic streaks. Was I everyone’s water cooler?

  “No, that’s not true,” Jane said. “It’s not you. It’s this business, this place. I get so much bullshit all the time. But see, that’s why you … I mean … well …”

  It was unlike Jane to stumble around like that. Bumbling was my domain.

  “What?” I pressed. “You mean what?”

  “Not now, not here. Maybe when you come over for dinner.”

  She started hanging glasses in the rack above the bar, standing on tiptoe to reach the top row. Jane looked good stretching like that, her taut midriff showing below a red silk blouse tied at the bottom. But then Jane looked good doing anything. I didn’t care what she prepared for dinner, as long as I could feast my eyes on her.

  We agreed on seven o’clock Sunday because she worked Saturday nights, which meant I’d have to cancel my weekly visit with my parents. But I wasn’t about to worry about that, especially considering my reason for canceling. And who knew? Maybe I’d have to worry about something else come Monday morning.

  Like getting to work on time after an amorous night.

  Chapter 62

  In the months following our picnic, Ellen Drury and I remained cordial yet distant. We greeted each other in the hallway with a wave and a smile and perhaps a comment or two about the weather, and that was it. Except, as I’ve said, I did tell her about my plan to go skydiving, to which she responded, “You’re kidding, right?” and about my having gone, to which she replied, “Good for you.” Which I didn’t know how to interpret. Anyway, I was getting used to this quasi-estrangement when on a Friday afternoon, just after I’d returned from lunch with another unattainable female, Ellen modified our unwritten pact.