The Last Laugh

by Arjuna Ardagh

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Yes. It means you can go have some fun and maybe even make a few Christmas presents.” My mind had been read like the cover of a magazine. Again. “And Matt, I was wondering if I could use your car. We’re out of nutmeg, and the store will close in half an hour. My battery’s dead.”

  I hesitated, wondering if Katie had taken driving lessons from her husband.

  “Sure,” Joey interjected, before I had time to speak. “The keys are in the glove box.” That took care of it. Out of my hands. I was past caring.

  “So, who’s the master potter?” I asked.

  “Cheryl,” Katie beamed back.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE REAL TEACHER

  There we were, dressed in aprons that looked like they’d seen better days, cutting up a big piece of clay. Cheryl had changed. She’d softened. I was wondering if Joey had tipped her off. She showed me how to cut the clay into the right kind of chunks, how to moisten it with water. Then she put it on the wheel and we spent a couple of hours learning how to make a flower vase, a milk jug, and a bowl. She was thorough in her instruction, and when I was a little too eager with shaping my creation, she touched me gently on the arm.

  “Easy,” she said. “Easy, boy.”

  I tried to remember what the problem had been. Whenever my creation collapsed completely into a wobbly mess, we both burst out laughing. We were actually having fun. She showed me how to apply glaze, and we put our creations in the kiln and washed up. The afternoon passed without ado.

  When we got back to the house, Joey was fast asleep with George Gurdjieff on the floor at his feet. There was no one else around. I crept up to my room and lay on the bed, an indescribable feeling of goodness in my body somewhere in the unclaimed zone between sex, good food, laughter, and sleep.

  They called me down at six for dinner. By now, there must have been more than a dozen gathered for Christmas Eve. Joey, Katie, me, Cheryl, Sam, the old man Tim, the lawyer couple, even the police chief and his wife.

  We ate meat loaf, brussels sprouts, and brown rice pilaf, and drank red wine. The tiniest things seemed funny. Joey regaled us with stories that brought tears of laughter to our eyes. Finally, after chocolate pudding (Joey had three helpings) and some kind of spicy tea, a man called David stood up.

  “Time for the meeting, folks. We’ll see you all in the yurt at nine o’clock.”

  There was a scurry of activity as people rose with plates and bowls and started cleaning. Cheryl disappeared. They all seemed to know what to do. I felt helpless; Joey rescued me. He gave me a wink, and nodded his head toward the living room.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’ve done your share of the work today with that firewood. Sit yourself down here.”

  We sat by the fire together.

  “How are you?” he asked, as though he were quoting someone else, like he did not believe his own question.

  “Wonderful,” I said. But it was also as though someone else said it. It was very odd. We were having a conversation in which we were both caricaturing ourselves. The joke of it all. Something else eclipsed the small talk.

  “You don’t miss your kids?” said Joey.

  “Yes, I do,” I said, and thought for a while. “It’s the same missing, but now it feels … well good, I guess. It’s not painful. Does that sound really weird?”

  “Ah,” said Joey. “Everything can be like that. Your wife called,” he added after some silence.

  “My wife?”

  “Yes, don’t you remember you left a message for her?”

  “When did she call?”

  “While you were doing your pottery. I talked to her for a while. Nice woman. I had a word with your kids, too.”

  “You talked to my kids?”

  “Yep. Dominic and … ”

  “Sarah.”

  “That’s right. Anyway, they said they were going to some sort of family thing tonight.”

  Probably Mafia, I thought to myself.

  “She asked you to call her in the morning.”

  “She did?” I tried to appear matter-of-fact, but my heart was pounding. “Yep,” said Joey. We lapsed into silence again. The room was spinning. The wine had suddenly taken hold. I felt tired and dizzy and sick. Joey had talked to my wife and kids.

  “What about the real teacher?” I asked. “You said when I came here I would meet the real teacher. Is that you?”

  Joey laughed. “It’s not me.” He paused. “And it’s not not me. You’ll meet the real teacher tonight.”

  Soon the others were walking back through the living room on their way out of the house. Joey gave me a nod; we rose and followed. We walked over to a round canvas building on a platform. This must be the yurt. From the outside it seemed as though it would be freezing sitting in a canvas building, but inside it was quite cozy, with a wood-burning stove even. The temperature was quite comfortable enough for a T-shirt. About 20 people sat in a circle. The chief of police grinned at me and winked.

  David hit a metal bowl with a wooden mallet, and the room fell silent. We all closed our eyes. I found a well of physical pleasure in my belly so intense I was tempted to scream. My body began making small, jerky movements that originated in my belly and hinged my body at the solar plexus. Inside I was smiling, a total smile. I wasn’t only smiling with the lips; I was smiling in my lungs and liver and through the whole length of yards of intestines. My genitals and asshole were smiling.

  After some time the bell rang again. There was silence. I waited for Joey to conduct the meeting. But it was obvious, not only from the seating arrangement, but also from the disposition of the people, that this was not going to be his show. No one was looking at him any more than at anyone else. Finally, Tim cleared his throat.

  “Well,” he began. His cultured British accent reminded me of an Oscar Wilde play. “Someone has to begin. It might as well be me, before I drop dead.”

  Someone laughed nervously.

  “Yes,” Tim said. “Sam was kind enough to drive me here yesterday. My eyesight is so bad, I can’t even tell how many we are tonight.” His voice was so thin and frail it felt like he was speaking to us from another room. A room I sensed I had never been to.

  “I got my tests back last week,” he said. “They confirmed that it is malignant.” A perfect stillness in the room. “As we already knew, or at least suspected. And I have to tell you that it’s a wonderful and interesting experience to finally arrive at the place we all avoid. The tumor is too deeply buried in the spine to make it worth considering the possibility of surgery. And it is too far gone for chemotherapy or radiation.”

  His eyes were as clear as a June sky.

  “All my life, just like everyone, I wondered how this day would be. And I was surprised,” Tim said. “I felt no pushing away of any of it. I’ve lived fully. I’ve done all I need to do, and probably quite a bit more than was actually necessary.” He chuckled quietly. “I’m ready for the next great adventure. I guess I’d like to add … ” Now his voice quivered just a little; his already shaking hand shook a little more visibly, “ … how deeply I feel blessed by this circle of friends. I’ve known some of you for decades.” He glanced at Joey. “I’ve seen us all go through hell and high water. It’s almost certainly my last Christmas here. I know that I can die and say that I’ve loved for real.”

  When he finished speaking, the only sound was the wood crackling in the stove.

  One by one, people offered a few words. Never more than a handful at a time. Appreciation, even humor.

  “You’re the wickedest old pervert I’ve ever known,” said Joey, deadpan. “I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

  The room settled once again into the same stillness from which Tim had spoken. The silence was like music. I could feel it pulling me into its depth, caressing me from within my skin.

  This time the silence was broken by Jesse. “Yeah, I’ve been kind of torn up since Lizzie left.” Early 20s, greasy shoulder-length mousy hair, old sneakers
, sweater with a hole. He sat quite still. His body indicated one could say anything to him, anything at all, and he would not flinch. His openness was not just a lack of defense; it was extraordinary, worn out loud.

  Jesse looked at me and explained, “She was my girlfriend. She went to New York to go to dance school. I’ve thought a lot about following her there to be together, but I don’t know anybody. Besides, I wonder sometimes if she still wants to be with me. It’s been a few months now, I think about dating other people, but I just can’t replace her. I feel stuck.” Even in his stuckness, his vulnerability contained raw power.

  Again, a silence in the room, a waiting. Katie spoke.

  “Lizzie is a beautiful girl, Jesse. And I absolutely know that even though she’s pulled to her studying, she still loves you very deeply.” No one spoke, but I could feel the assent like a wave.

  A couple of other people offered comments. Suddenly my heart was beating faster, my spine straightened, and I realized that quite beyond my control, I was also about to speak. It was a body sensation, like being about to sneeze, and knowing there is no longer any choice.

  “I don’t know you.” The words began, all on their own. It was a relief of pressure. “But I can feel you. And it feels to me really good to just stay where you are, feeling what you’re feeling. It may be painful to be separated from the one you love, but if you just sit with all this, it will take you deeper into yourself. It will allow you to love more deeply in the future because you’ll have passed through this pain of being left.”

  I could feel the attention with me. I had the room. “I am where you are, and I’m learning this, too.”

  I was surprised. My mouth was dry; my heart was beating so wildly, I was afraid I would croak. Who just made me say that? I looked at Joey; he raised one eyebrow again at me. His eyes twinkled.

  The gathering continued like this for perhaps an hour. Someone would speak, describe what was happening for them, and there would follow a silence. Then different voices in the room would respond. I spoke two or three more times, each like the first, without premeditation, as though being used. A couple times we agreed on little tasks people had to do that the group agreed on. Jesse’s assignment, for example, was to write a poem every day, turning his longing for his girlfriend into art. Charlie, who’d brought his heart problem to the group, was given an assignment of 20 minutes of exercise every day.

  Eventually our words ran out, as the fire died down to glowing embers. The gong rang again, and we closed our eyes. My body was very alive, absolutely sober and awake.

  We stepped out of the yurt. The moon was shining brightly. The air was cold and damp, but refreshing. It felt good to deeply breathe in huge gulps, as though it was washing my lungs clean. I sauntered a bit, waiting for Joey. We walked back together.

  “Good,” he said. “It’s starting to flow in you.”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he chuckled.

  “So, who’s the real teacher?” I asked him.

  He stopped, looked me directly in the eyes, and paused.

  “You are,” he said with an absolutely calm voice. “You are, and it’s more than you. As soon as you put yourself in the position of listening, feeling into others, feeling what’s best for others, you discover the real teacher, invisible, never seen, behind your own eyes. It’s you and it’s not you.

  “The real teacher is not a person, it’s a meeting.”

  CHAPTER 18

  ETERNAL NOW

  Christmas morning. The air in the room was cool, the warmth under the comforter in my bed made it seem like the best place to stay all day. I lay still, marveling at how relaxed and full my body felt. The ocean in my belly sent ripples as I moved in the bed, out into my arms and legs, satiated as though I’d just feasted. I reached out drunkenly to find a logical cause for feeling so good: I’m going to talk to the kids today; Joey and Katie’s kindness toward me; Cheryl with the pottery.

  My attention turned to noises coming from downstairs. As if awakening from a dream, I realized I had been tuning them out for quite some time now. I had no watch. I pulled on my clothes. Opening my door, I stumbled over a neat pile of folded laundry. I almost fell down the stairs into the living room and found everyone gathered from the night before. The clock above the fireplace said a quarter to 11.

  “We’d given you up for dead,” said Joey. “You’re too late for breakfast, you know.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Katie said. “There’s plenty. Don’t tease the boy; it’s Christmas.”

  “Your wife called,” Joey went on, shifting the chewing tobacco to his cheek.

  “What?” Now I tripped on the dog, conveniently lying across the bottom of the stairs. I had to grab hold of the kitchen door to avoid throwing myself full force into the Christmas tree.

  “Yep, about nine o’clock. Nice woman,” he said as an aside to Tim. Tim raised his eyebrows and looked interested, ready for a good story.

  “You talked to her?” I tried to calm the tone of my voice.

  “We had quite a chat,” Joey told Tim, ignoring me. “Into photography, you know.”

  “Really?” said Tim with an exaggerated rise in the music of the word, as though Joey had just told him my wife was this month’s centerfold in Playboy, and loves to offer oral sex to strangers.

  “Well, I, uh … ,” I tried to get control of the conversation. This was my wife they were carving up for Christmas here. But I was still off balance.

  “She’s mighty keen on Cartier-Bresson,” Joey went on. “I knew him, you know. I have a few of his original prints.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed Tim, full of hidden meaning.

  “Well that was big news to her!” Joey laughed. “She wants to get together and see them as soon as possible.”

  “You’re going to get together with Becca?” I blurted, now more or less free of the Christmas tree. I noticed my zipper was down. I pulled it up, which completely deflected everyone’s attention from what I was saying.

  “And the children … very sweet,” Joey continued, offering Tim tobacco. “I had a long talk with the young boy about Legos.” Tim waved aside the tobacco, but seemed very excited about the mention of a young boy.

  “You talked about Legos with my son?” I interrupted.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Joey, looking at me for the first time. “I helped design some of the early models back in Denmark in ’63.”

  I might have guessed.

  “I had a chat with your father-in-law, too. Now there’s a deep man, that Paulo. Sicilian. That’s a mighty lush part of the world. Remember, Katie? Those weeks we spent in Palermo?” Katie smiled. “Best olives in the whole world. But hurry up, boy. They’re waiting for you to call, almost a couple of hours now.”

  I stumbled into the kitchen; my heart was racing. Fuck them all, these dirty old men. I got the numbers mixed up on the rotary phone, and had to redial three times.

  “Hello!” Becca’s sing-song voice always played my heart like a lute.

  I grunted.

  “Good morning, darling! Happy Christmas!” she went on.

  “It’s me, Matt.” I don’t know who I imagined she thought it was, and was calling “darling,” but it couldn’t be me.

  “Yes, I know! Happy Christmas!” she laughed.

  “I’m staying with some friends.” I felt she needed some sort of explanation.

  “Yes. Such a nice man. We had quite a talk, Matt.”

  “Oh, Joey. That’s good. That’s good, Becca.” I found a piece of bread someone had left on the kitchen counter. I crumbled it between my fingers.

  “He says you’re going to do really well, Matt.”

  “He did?” I mushed the crumbs together into a tight ball.

  “Yeah!” Her voice reached an almost operatic pitch with enthusiasm. “He said everything’s going to be really fine. Honey, I was just waiting for you to pull it together. I knew you would.” I pushed a hole into the mushed bread ball with my thumb.

&nb
sp; “Oh! Um … right. Well, it just took a little time, that’s all.” My throat felt dry. I stuffed the mushy bread ball into my mouth, realized what I had done, and spat it out again.

  “Do you want to speak to the kids? I can’t wait to see you, darling!” I wiped the mess from the counter with my shirt. A storm brewing in my chest. What lies had Joey told her? I didn’t have much time to think about it.

  “Hey, Dad! Happy Christmas!” Dominic on the phone.

  “Happy Christmas, Dom. How are you?” A bird sang outside the window. What kind of bird sings in December?

  “Great! Hey, thanks for the gift, Dad. I miss you.” It might be in a cage.

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart. I miss you, too.” My voice was mechanical, flat. Here they are, all my loved ones opening the doors to peace again, and I’m screwing it up. “Have you been having a good time?”

  Dominic lowered his voice to a whisper. I could hardly hear him. “It’s boring, Dad. Grandpa’s kinda weird. He’s got guns. I want to come home.” The birdsong became louder, as if inside the room.

  My throat tightened. “Yes, darling. Soon. I want you to come home, too.” I hated this, this enactment of what I had most desired. I was getting my postponed dreams, but not on my terms. Set up like this I felt like a cheat.

  “Daddee!” Here was Sarah. “Happy Christmas, Daddy.”

  “Happy Christmas, poppet. Are you having a good time?” Christ, give me something better to say. I was spoiling it all. My head hurt, I was thirsty.

  “Yes, Daddy. I miss you.”

  “We’ll see each other soon, honey.” The bird stopped. I could only hear laughter from the other room.

  Becca back on the line. “Heey … ” Her voice raised in the middle and dropped at the end. Sexy, almost. I could taste her lower lip between mine. She spoke in that guttural voice that always ended us up between the sheets, her pretending it was me who was horny. “Well, I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.”

  “Neither can I,” I said. My voice was still flat, as much as I tried to squish some innuendo into the bread ball of this new intimacy.