“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Mary turned over the ignition. The radio—Rock 106, Peoria’s classic rock station—blasted Heart’s “Barracuda” from the speakers. She loved this song and remembered a time when she thought of herself as a barracuda. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a retirement home bus. She backed out of the parking spot carefully, but before she could get halfway out, she had to stop to let a group of old people, walking single file toward the bus like a sixth-grade class, cross behind her. A white-haired lady with a walker made eye contact with her, while a bald guy in a flannel shirt wearing a loose wristwatch waved. Mary thought of Green in the hospital. She had held his hand last night, and it felt bony, like his long fingers were pencils. She hated what happened to the human body over time. You need to get back to the hospital, the whisper voice said. What are you doing with this guy?
Chic slouched down in the seat, hugging his duffel bag against his chest. “Don’t say anything,” he whispered. “There’s Morris. Don’t move.” A guy wearing a Members Only windbreaker brought up the rear of the line. He was looking around with concern—right, left, over his shoulder. Chic was scrunched so far down in his seat he was practically on the floor. “I’m supposed to be on that bus. Jesus Christ, Morris is going to see me.”
This was a new low. She was “kidnapping” an old man from a nursing home. His assisted living residence, the loud voice said back, and it wasn’t exactly kidnapping. You asked him to come with you, and he agreed. He likes you. And you sorta like him or think you could like him, in time.
“You’ll have to drive me back to We Care,” Chic said from his slouched position. “In Middleville. When we’re done.”
“I know. You told me.”
“It’s a half-hour drive.”
“That’s fine.”
“That’s a half hour there and a half hour back.”
“I know. I got it.”
“I have to be back by ten.”
“You told me. I remember.”
“I’m just saying.”
“I got it.”
Once everyone had disappeared into the bus, Mary eased the minivan out of the spot and turned the corner into the lot where the valet guys were huddled by the entrance to the casino.
“Okay. It’s safe now.”
“You sure?”
“It’s fine.”
Chic sat back up and put on his seat belt. “That was close.”
This is the biggest mistake of your life, the whisper voice told her.
“I haven’t been to a bar in years. I never went to bars that much to begin with. My wife didn’t like them. She’s dead though. I’m a widower. Or a widow. Is it widower or widow? I’m widowed. Can a man be a widow?”
“You told me your wife died. Three times now.”
Chic shrugged. “She hated me. Did I tell you that? Hate probably isn’t the right word. I did some things that made her mad. That’s probably more accurate.”
Mary wasn’t exactly sure why she’d decided to take Chic to the Brazen Bull. It had come to her during her shift, and she went with it. She told him that she was going to hustle pool and it would help if there was a man with her.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why my wife hated me?”
“How about we don’t talk about your wife.”
“She didn’t really hate me. I just said that. I haven’t really been with a woman in a while, and I thought it would make you feel sorry for me, if you thought my wife hated me. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
Mary kept her eyes on the road. She didn’t care if his wife hated him or not. She was dead now, anyway.
“I got a confession. I should have told you this. I don’t think I can fight anyone. I mean I’ve never been in a fight. Actually, I take that back. One time. With my brother. Wasn’t really a fight. He pulled me out a window. What I’m saying is that I probably won’t be much help with this pool hustle thing.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to fight anyone.”
They stopped at a light at Creve Coeur Avenue, about a mile down from the Pair-a-Dice. Next to them was a baby blue Mustang—Mary knew it was a ’65. The driver, a guy with feathered blond hair parted in the middle, was wearing mirrored sunglasses. At that moment, Mary would have given anything—anything—to be sitting in that Mustang. The light changed.
“Oh, that’s a good restaurant. We sometimes stop there on the way home from the casino.” Chic pointed out the window at a Denny’s, its parking lot half full. “I like the eggs over my hammy. Get it, like sun over Miami?
“I get it.”
“What do you think of Florida?”
“I don’t really.”
“As a place to go. A destination. A place to live.”
“It’s hot.”
“It’s hot,” Chic repeated. “I did my honeymoon in Florida. Did I tell you that?”
“How about we don’t talk about our pasts?”
“I’m just trying to get to know you.”
“But you’re not really asking me questions. You’re just telling me things about yourself. How about let’s concentrate on the right now.”
Chic looked out the window. “You have any kids?”
She didn’t take the bait.
“Married?”
“I told you.”
“Happily married?”
“Let’s not talk. Okay. We’re almost there. It’s right up here.”
Mary drove into the parking lot of the Brazen Bull and pulled into a spot next to a beat-up van with a ladder strapped to its roof. There was a bumper sticker on the ladder that read, IF ALL ELSE FAILS, USE A BIGGER HAMMER. The only other car in the parking lot was a Geo Metro.
“Looks like this place used to be a fast food restaurant,” Chic said. “That’s the drive-through right there. What was this, a McDonald’s or something?”
“I don’t know. It’s a bar now.”
“A fast food restaurant that’s now a bar. Who would have thought? Things change, huh?”
Mary reached behind the seat and dug through the laundry bag until she found one of Green’s sport coats, the maroon one. “Put this on,” she told Chic. Under the laundry bag was a pair of alligator slip-on loafers. She handed them to Chic.
“My God, these are the worst shoes I’ve ever seen. Is this your husband’s stuff?” Chic slipped on the sport coat over his windbreaker. The sleeves hung beyond his hands. “This doesn’t fit me.”
Mary rolled up the sleeves. “Let me see those shoes.” She took them and stuffed tissues from her purse into the tips of the shoes.
“They’re not going to fit me. I don’t care how much Kleenex you stuff in ’em.”
“Just put ’em on, okay?”
Chic took off his jogging shoes and put on the loafers. He was right. They didn’t fit, not even close.
“Why are you making me wear all this stuff?”
“Just deal with it. Okay. Humor me.”
On the walk across the parking lot, Chic’s heels kept slipping out of the oversized loafers, and the soles thwacked the concrete. Once they were inside, Mary put “Barracuda” on the jukebox. Chic tried not to move. He looked the place over. At the pool table, a college kid and an older guy dressed like a motorcycling cowboy were facing off. A couple sat at a table drinking brown liquor. A fat guy wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off was belly up at the bar.
Mary ordered a tomato juice and was sipping it through a straw while she watched the pool game. Chic thwacked across the bar. The college kid stopped sighting up his pool shot to glare at him. Chic slipped into a booth, not even noticing the look he was getting, and set his duffel bag on the table and fished out a notebook. He opened to a poem he was working on. He’d been struggling with it for two days. So far he had one line: Around the corner is the end. He glanced up from his notebook to notice Mary staring at him. Her eyes seemed to say, what are you doing? Behind her, the bartender was wiping down the bar; the guy at the bar was watching televi
sion; the college kid hit his shot and the cue ball clicked into another ball. A line came to him, in the same way that all lines of poetry did, dropping out of the heavens and into his mind—the end is the end is the end. He reread the line. Nah. He didn’t like it. He scratched it out. He flipped back a few pages. To get the juices flowing, it helped to look over old poems. He read one of his favorites.
My life is nothing
but a large hole in the ground
I can’t get out of.
Chic stuck the end of the pen in his mouth. The motorcycle cowboy walked up to Mary. They whispered to each other, and the cowboy took out his wallet. Mary motioned to Chic. The motorcycle cowboy turned around. “You want him to hold the money?” he asked. Chic picked up his club soda and set it down hard; some of the soda splashed out and got on his hand. Then he gave the motorcycle cowboy his best mean face.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with him?”
The college kid, who was sighting up another shot, looked over at Chic, and Chic narrowed his eyes.
“Is he sick or something?” the motorcycle cowboy asked.
“I’m not sure,” Mary said. “He might be.”
Chic & Buddy Waldbeeser
February 18, 1960
It was the night after the Rivermen game, and Chic was tossing and turning in bed, thinking about Lijy’s letter. She’d said she was going to tell Buddy “the day after tomorrow,” which had been today. After he had gotten home from work, each time the phone rang, his heart had started thumping in his chest. Sitting in the living room, he couldn’t concentrate on Truth or Consequences and was zoned out when Bob Barker uttered his famous sendoff, “Hoping all your consequences are happy ones.” Chic knew that Lijy’s news would bulldoze his brother’s emotions, slay him, pull out his heart. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if Buddy cried in front of him. At their father’s funeral, Chic had heard Buddy sniffling, but couldn’t bring himself to look over at him. Instead, he kept staring at the hymnal and bible in the book tray affixed to the pew in front of him. Tom McNeeley held their mother’s hand, squeezing it and keeping it in his lap. At one point, Tom handed Chic a Kleenex, but it was Buddy, by then heaving and drooling and pretty much having an epileptic fit of sadness, who really needed one. Chic couldn’t face that type of sadness again.
At two in the morning, Chic got out of bed. He hadn’t gotten a single second of sleep all night. He walked down the hall and peeked into Lomax’s room. The desk lamp was on, and Lomax was sleeping on top of his comforter, an explosion of papers on the floor, his briefcase open beside them. Chic tiptoed inside, shut off the desk lamp, and closed his son’s bedroom door behind him. He then went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Filling up his glass at the sink, he looked out the window. Stillness. A slight winter breeze through the trees. Scattered porch lights. The streetlamp on the corner. Then, from the backyard, Chic heard something. A light tap-tap-tap, like someone fudging a finishing nail into place. He walked to the back of the house, to the bathroom, and looked out the window. Someone was struggling to climb over the fence. The person was hung up at the top, and couldn’t shift his weight to get over. When the person tried to throw his body over, the toe of his boot tapped the fence’s wood planks. Directly underneath this person was a rosebush—shriveled and dormant for the winter but still full of thorns. The person turned his head, and Chic saw his brother’s worried face. Buddy was wearing a drab-olive World War I uniform, the kind with the brass buttons and puttees. Chic immediately recognized the uniform as their father’s, who had served in the Thirty-Third Infantry Division (“Prairie Division”) in World War I. On the ground, upside down like a soup bowl next to the rosebush, was their father’s doughboy helmet.
With a final burst of effort, Buddy fell into backyard, barely missing the rose bush. He scrambled and reached for the helmet, which he placed on his head, not bothering with the chinstrap. He then searched around for something else, and finally found what he was looking for: a butcher knife. What was he going to do with that? Before Chic could come up with an answer, Buddy was sneaking across the backyard and around to the front of the house. Chic went to the living room and flipped on the ceiling light. After a few seconds, Buddy periscoped up to peer in the window. Chic crossed the living room, and Buddy must have seen the movement because he quickly ducked back down. Chic opened the window. He could see his brother hunkering close to the wall, trying to hide.
“Buddy, what are you doing?”
He didn’t answer.
“Buddy. I can see you.”
He looked up at him. “Lean out the window. I want to tell you something.”
“It’s two in the morning. What are you doing? Why are you wearing that uniform?”
“Just lean out the goddamn window.”
Chic could hear by the tone in his brother’s voice that it would be a good idea for him to play along. As soon as he leaned out the window, however, Buddy grabbed Chic by the pajama top and pulled him out into the front lawn. He then pinned him to the ground, holding both of Chic’s arms above his head. So, this was it. This was how it was going to happen. Of all the ways, Chic wouldn’t have guessed this—dragging him out his living room window, a butcher knife, his father’s military uniform.
Buddy pressed the knife’s point against Chic’s nostril. “I could cut off your nose.”
“Buddy . . . ”
“Shut up.”
“Bud . . . ”
“Shut up. You commie. You ankle biter. Keep your goddamn mouth shut.” Buddy grabbed a handful of his own hair. Horrified, Chic watched him shear it off. Buddy then forced the sheared hair into Chic’s mouth. “Buddy . . . don’t . . . don’t . . . stop it . . . I . . . please . . . ”
“Eat it. Eat it, you serpent-tongued snake.” He pressed the point of the knife into Chic’s cheek, and Chic quit thrashing. A tiny bead of blood bubbled on his cheek. “Swallow it, you rat fink mother puss bucket pinko.”
Chic swallowed the hair, or at least tried to, but most of it stuck to the roof of his mouth and got hung up in his throat. When Buddy took his hand off his mouth, Chic spit and gagged.
Buddy rolled off of him and stabbed the knife into the ground. The way he was hunched over and shaking, Chic knew he was crying. He put his hand on his back, but Buddy sloughed it off.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry, Buddy,” Chic said.
Buddy wiped his eyes. They were blown out, blazing with pain. Chic remembered a family photo shoot. Their mother had paid a photographer to come over to the house. Chic was five or six years old, and their mother dressed him and Buddy in matching tweed suits. Their father wore his military uniform with the overseas cap. He’d spent all morning polishing the boots, and Chic had watched him sit on the bed and wrap each of his calves with puttees. For the photo, Chic sat on his father’s knee. Buddy stood next to him. Their mother stood behind their father, her hand on his shoulder. Chic remembered that the uniform smelled like mothballs and that his father kept pulling at the collar and complaining about how tight it was on his neck. During Chic’s entire childhood, the photo hung on the wall going up the stairs. In his memory, it still hung on that wall.
“It was a mistake, Buddy. I made a mistake.”
“She’s pregnant. Did you know that? Of course you knew that.”
Chic put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He wanted Buddy to know he was going to help him get through this. Buddy sloughed it off, again. Then he pulled the knife from the frozen ground, picked up the doughboy helmet and walked away, down the street toward the corner streetlight, the helmet under his arm.
Chic & Diane Waldbeeser
February 19, 1960
“Wait a second,” Diane said. “I’m confused. Why did you let him believe you slept with Lijy?”
“Because of what happened in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me about the kitchen.” Diane put her hands on her
hips. She knew something like this was going to happen. Ever since the wedding reception, she knew Chic Waldbeeser wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. He said he wanted a normal life, she heard him with her own two ears, and then, he goes off and . . .
He told her everything, right down to the detail that he kept his socks on and his penis worked its way out while he was humping the air. “And that’s what happened in the kitchen.”
“Oh my God!”
“I’m not happy about it either. Trust me. In fact, it was embarrassing.”
Lomax cracked his bedroom door open. He eyed his father, then his mother. He had a look on his face like he’d eaten something sour.
Diane looked at Chic. “Great. Lomax heard you. He knows that you tried to have sex with Lijy.”
“Lomax, buddy, I didn’t have sex with Aunt Lijy. I just told my brother I did. And, yes, at one time, a long time ago . . . ”
Lomax stared at him. He put his hands over his ears.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Diane’s bottom lip quivered.
“Lomax. Listen to me. Take your hands off your ears. Let me explain. I’m doing the right thing here. Uncle Buddy is my brother, and he’s in a lot of pain. He was crying last night, and Lijy, Aunt Lijy, remember the way she was acting at the hockey game? Well, she—as you heard—she made a mistake, and I’m worried about Uncle Buddy and to help out, because it’s the right thing to do, I told him that . . . wait. Diane. Don’t. Not the bathroom. No.”
She slammed the bathroom door and locked it. Chic looked at Lomax. He wheeled his briefcase toward the stairs.
“I didn’t sleep with Aunt Lijy, buddy. Someday, you’ll see. When you have a brother, you’ll see. This will all make sense.”
Lomax pulled the briefcase down the stairs.
“Being an adult is hard, Lomax. You’re going to see this someday, and you’re going to think back on this day and you’re going to realize that your dad was doing the right thing.”
“I’ll be in the car,” Lomax yelled, slamming the front door.
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