by Bruce Jones
PUBLISHED BY BRUCE JONES ASSOCIATES, INC.
Copyright Bruce Jones 2011
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the writer’s imagination or are fused fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This is a story about loss. Something we all deal with, in our individual ways, every day. It’s hard not to think of loss in these times with so much of it around: Japan, Alabama, Louisiana, Joplin, recession, joblessness, Oprah Winfrey. Watching the HBO movie Too Big To Fail last night gave the word a whole new slant. Loss. Change the last letter to a “t” and you have a completely different word with an almost hauntingly identical meaning.
They say “every time you lose something, you gain something.” So why then does it—sometimes—hurt so much? Death is the elephant in the room here. Death of a family member, death of a close friend, death of a marriage—those are supposed to be the Big Three. I’ve experienced all in the exact reverse order, the last as recently as this week—a decades old friend with whom I shared both the love of art and the eccentricities of our entwining careers. I cannot imagine not hearing his voice ever again, his laugh, his laments, his ingeniously idiosyncratic mind. Who will I turn to now for that part of me that was him? Yet isn’t my own passing as inevitable as his? These bodies are but borrowed, these surrounding hovels as temporary as the next great wind. Why do we cling to both as if they were timeless, adamantine? Under it all aren’t we as nakedly finite as the stars that made us? Or as Updike, in one of his last novels, Villages, put it far more eloquently: “It is a mad thing, to be alive. Villages exist to moderate this madness—to hide it from children, to bottle it for private use, to smooth its imperatives into habits, to protect us from the darkness without and the darkness within.” One of our great writers…now one of our greatest losses.
Losing a premature baby was my first great loss and without a doubt the worst. I wept for weeks. It turned me inside out. I thought the agony would never end. So traumatized was I, that when my wife again became pregnant (a risky one) I honestly believed I wouldn’t make it to full term. But the baby, a beautiful boy, was born—not without incident—happy and healthy and in every way perfect. I knew it was our last child and was surprised to find a measure of relief in that. I’d never have to go through the awful fear of that kind of loss again.
Except the one thing you can be sure about life is: you can never be sure about any of it.
One sunny day when my boy was five, we drove to a favorite beach in Ventura County to stroll the shops and take the sea air. There was a small emporium containing an indoor carousel and snack bar I thought my son might enjoy. I put him on one of the wooden horses, watched him laugh and wave round and round, then took him to the snack bar for popcorn. There was some protracted problem about the right change that is no longer clearly memorable to me. What is indelibly memorable is my turning around, popcorn in hand, to find my son—ten seconds ago at my side—gone.
The terror comes in building stages. At first you realize, hey, he was just here, couldn’t have gone far, must be over by the carousel watching the horses. Then, finding he is not there or anywhere else in the emporium, you think (panic rising but still manageable) he must have stepped outside: it’s been less than a minute. The all-out terror comes when you search around the building still not finding him, start searching the concourse and find that too is empty, and it hits you that someone that small could not possibly have gotten so far away: unless he was taken.
The thing I remember most? The look on an elderly lady’s face when I accosted her on the concourse in a state of deteriorating frenzy. “Have you seen a little boy?” I asked. Maybe it was the sound of my own voice or the look on my face, but to this day I can still hear with clear distinction every syllable of her reply: “Oh, no!” That single “no” has followed me down the years, ever just at my shoulder, followed by my own thoughts: Stupid, stupid, stupid! Bad father!
I had never spanked my boy in his life. But when I came back through the emporium door, drained and dazed, looked up and saw my son ease smiling from behind the wooden snack counter, spanking and spanking him very hard was exactly what I intended as I rushed toward him. Instead, of course, I swept him into my arms, hugged him till he yelped and muttered, choking against him: “Don’t ever do that again!”
Years older now, he doesn’t even recall an event I know will live forever within me. Every grueling second of it.
Of all my stories the one that follows is—for the most part, at least—probably the most autobiographic. The ending’s pure fiction, of course, although that too, I suppose, might someday become an eventuality. In the meantime, maybe, like Robert Wilkes, you’ve had--weaving life’s ever surprising obstacle course--a similar experience while playing
ROBERT Wilkes pushed through lethargic exit doors into chill December night, sucking the cold into his lungs with a gasp.
“Jesus, it’s freezing out here!”
His wife burrowed deeper in her fur-trimmed coat, hunched lower with a trembling nod. “Amen.”
Her way of reminding him not to take certain individuals name’s in vain so close to the season. They walked briskly across the parking lot, tracking through icy rivers of slush--filthy from endless parades of chained tires--squinting against sudden rude blasts of stinging wind. “Holiday spirit or no holiday spirit,” he grunted, “I’m glad that’s over with. Christmas is for the young, the very young.” He shifted heavy store packages in his arms.
She turned abruptly, made a stricken face. “Damn!”
He stopped, icy vapor fluttering, dread building. “What is it?”
She gave him that look he dreaded most at times like this, one of sheepish apology. “I forgot someone!”
“Oh, Lindy, no!” His toes were already beginning to lose feeling.
“It’s Kim Jameson down the block! She gave us that beautiful dish last year, we can’t just forget her!”
He groaned, cast his eyes heavenward. “I can!”
“You go on to the car,” she told him, shivering violently. “You can turn on the heater, I’ll only be a few minutes.”
He looked down the long, darkened parking lot and shook his head. “We’re almost out of gas and you won’t be a few minutes, you’ll be tied up forever in line with other last minute Yule-tiders brimming with holiday spirit.” And sighing regret: “I’d better go with you.”
A gust of wind pushed them back the way they’d come. He held her arm, guiding her around frozen lakes and pot holes, asking himself for the hundredth time that evening why in hell he didn’t do his Christmas shopping in August. It was the same thing every year, as if he deliberately planned this agony for himself—some guilt-edged form of self-punishment. For sleeping late on Sundays, he thought; this is the way I do penance with the Lord.
For a moment, the warm rush of store air from within was a relief as they reentered the stampede, but within the space of two minutes someone jabbed him hard in the ribs, a child stepped on his already screaming toes, and the all-too familiar din of scurrying humanity gave new life to his once-fading headache. He heaved resigned breath as they approached the cattle chute at the escalator. If you squint your eyes, he thought, it’s like that scene from the silent classic Metropolis: soulless workers trudging to mechanized doom.
His wife must have seen the look on his face. “There’s no need for you to fight this, h
oney,” she said with endearing sympathy. “Somewhere there’s a book department on this floor, why don’t you browse around there while I look upstairs for Kim’s present? It’ll give you a chance to put the packages down.”
He had to love her. “What if we get lost?”
“We won’t. You just stay with the books. I’ll finish up and come to you!”
And he had to admit it sounded good. Better than watching her search through feminine apparel or dishware or whatever she was after. Christ. He didn’t even like Kim’s husband. “All right. Make it quick as you can though, huh Lindy?”
She gave his arm a patient squeeze, proffered that smile that said I love you despite all this mess. Just before she got to the escalator, he saw her point across the store expansively, silently mouth: Books—that way! Then the crowd swallowed her like a living thing.
He strained above the sea of bobbing heads to see where she’d indicated, saw only more bobbing heads, shrugged and struck off in what he hoped was the general direction.
Somewhere above the shuffling turmoil overhead speakers broadcast an ancient rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by an Irish tenor whose name he couldn’t recall, though he’d heard the song a thousand times over the years. Christmas classics. Right. The old speakers—or maybe the undulant crowd—made the song sound tinny. The way his brother used to tell him he sounded at choir practice. He chuckled under his breath. It was impossible to think of those days without a little rush of nostalgic warmth. And with it, an edge of guilt. Where along the way had he managed to lose his faith? The dealership? The mortgage? No…long before that. Maybe around the time he knew his wife knew they weren’t going to be rich after all…
His faith. His church. He could still see his father’s powerful frame from where he, as a child, had sat in the front row of pew, gazing with unending awe and fascination at the strong hands gripping the pulpit, listening with unswerving love and reverence to the voice that drove out all fear and worry. And later, that same commanding voice, reduced to a gargled whisper by the cancer eating his throat, instructing him from the strange-smelling death bed to take care of Mommy and little brother Jim. He’d prayed to God that night with all his might not to take his father away, not to leave him alone with those terrible responsibilities, the dark, featureless future. But God, it seemed, wasn’t home that night. In the pale stillness of early morning light his father had slipped away…and with him taken the church…
A line of squirming children and bored mothers blocked his path. His weary eyes followed them down the aisle to the bright, hand-painted sign hanging above: Toyland—Visit Santa Here! He shook his head and skirted the slow-trudging line and zombie faces, picturing in his mind this year’s version of Santa: another sad-eyed old man in a padded suit of crimson and white trim, dutifully hoisting each recalcitrant youngster to his lap for $3.50 an hour, hiding, no doubt, a fifth of bourbon somewhere in the cardboard workshop behind him.
Just after entering Sporting Goods his nose was assaulted by a sudden noxious odor. Good Christ, he thought, what in the world…?
He made a face, craned about for the source. Did some kid vomit? Crap his little skivvies? The whole department reeked. He pushed past a burly, blue-haired woman and hurried to get out of there, watching where he stepped as best he could.
He rounded a corner and found himself in Hardware. He hesitated, looked right and left. “Books, books,” he mumbled, “where the hell do they keep the damn books…” The packages were becoming lead in his arms. A growing numbness crept to his left shoulder. Heart attack. Nice.
Then he saw the sign: Books—Stationery.
He grunted satisfaction and moved ahead, forging path like a wide receiver.
In twenty minutes he’d seen all the books he wanted to see.
He found himself leaning against a table heaped high with remainder volumes, packages at his feet, arms folded, back muscles resenting him, listening to—how many times was it now?—God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The Muzak loop must have been stuck. Or maybe the store was just too cheap this season to up the variety. Right now he’d settle for six straight renditions of Jingle Bell Rock. Maybe even a chorus or two of Little Drummer Boy. Yeah, he thought, shifting his weight to his other aching arch, and a partridge in a pear tree.
He consulted his watch. It had been an hour since he’d left his wife at the escalator. Where the hell was she? Come on, Lindy, I’m slipping away here…
A woman shoved by and kicked the packages at his feet. Merry Christmas and fuck you very much.
He was hot under the heavy coat, had been hot for over half an hour now with no way to remove it. Should have left it in the damn car. Should have stayed in the damn car as Lindy had suggested. He knew she’d be late, they both had known she’d be late, she’d been trying to warn him. Shit.
He shifted his weight to the other leg, sighed. Wondered how many times he’s sighed that night. Why do people sigh, anyway? Just boredom or some necessary bodily function? Hadn’t he read somewhere it was caused by improper breathing or posture? That, by sighing, your body saturated the lungs with oxygen and thereby helped clear the brain. But was it voluntary or involuntary? Hadn’t he seen something on TV where--
--oh who the hell cares! Think about something else. Like a nice cold beer. Or six.
He glanced down at his watch again. It was exactly a minute and six seconds later than the last time he’d looked.
He closed his eyes there against the wooden counter. Please don’t start that damn song again. Please.
For a moment he thought he could almost fall asleep on his feet that way. Horses did it, why not humans? His uncle Allen had a horse once. Kept it in his back pasture. He remembered riding it a few times when he was very young. His Uncle told him once the crazy nag was always jumping the fence, running down the middle of the road, him chasing and cursing it. Funny image. What was that horse’s name, anyway? Angie? Agnus? Mr. Ed? Something. What if he opened his eyes right now and the whole crowd just disappeared. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe if he wished hard enough…
The crowd was still there. All but his wife.
Why were women always late? It wasn’t just a double standard, you know, they really were always late. Always. Lousy drivers, too. It was true. Always tell when you get behind some broad. Specially in traffic. Like they waited until you were sure they were going to make that red light, then slammed on their brakes in front of you. Lousy drivers and always late, habitually, every girl he’d ever known, Lindy one of the worst. It was a thing between them. He detested waiting for people, prided himself on his punctuality. She didn’t know the meaning of the word. Women. Great legs, though, had to give his Lindy that. Boobs could have been bigger, sure, but so what, at least they were real. But those legs. Especially before the kids came, remember that? Not an ounce of fat on her. Buns like apples. Guys used to stare at her when they passed on the sidewalk. He didn’t care, didn’t blame them. Let ‘em stare. He got to go home with—
--oh, shit…here came the song again.
He started to look down at his watch again, caught himself, jammed his hand into his coat pocket instead. A watched pot never boiled. Who comes up with crap like that anyway? And who cared? Useless information; his brain was full of it. Some truth to it, though. Glancing at his watch would only make it seem longer. Jesus but his back was killing him!
What was she doing up there for chrissake!
Maybe she was almost through. Maybe she’d found a gift and was standing at the head of the long check-out line, handing her plastic to the girl, or lady or whoever. He pictured the girl handing her back her card, smiling a Merry Christmas, saw his wife move back through the crowd with her package to the escalator, step on it, ride it down…cross the aisle to the book department. She’d be here any minute, any second…the next person to come into view—
He turned expectantly, seeing her smile in his mind’s eye, her waving arm. He scanned the myriad faces of strangers anxiously, searching, searching. A
ny second now, any second! The very next face would be hers—
Nothing.
He ground his teeth. Now I’m getting mad, damn it! Now I’m really getting teed! There was no earthly excuse for this! It had been the better part of two hours now! She dawdling around up there picking out just the right color of this or that, him down here with spikes through his back, arches on fire! Well, just wait till he saw her! He’d give her a piece of his mind all right, yes even in the middle of a department store! Not that the oblivious ignoramuses around him would notice! But he’d let her have it good, goddamnit, she deserved it! “And make it quick,” he’d told her! Right! She knew how exhausted he already was, the trouble he had with his feet! He’d offered to come back here to the store with her! He’d—
--an attractive girl came out of the sea of bodies and stopped to look at a book near him. She was slim and stately, really quite beautiful. Her swelling breasts strained against a yellow sweater, yellow like the waterfall of curls that fell to her small shoulders. My God; she could be a model. Easily. Maybe was a model. There was a time when girls her age used to look at him, used to notice him all the time, give him the eye. And not so long ago, either. He’d been something of a looker himself in his day. Damn straight. The chicks had dug him, no question about it. Even that teacher in high school that--