Some of those nights when Ned lay there beside him, Stanley would inch his hand close enough to feel the warmth of his son’s body. How many nights could he have so easily reached for Martha’s hand. Once she was diagnosed, it seemed wrong, false somehow. Though of course he did hold her hand at the end, he was so sorry that it came about because she was dying, that she would see it that way, the result of her dying. And he did love her. She was a good person, a kind person. She was a friend, a companion, and perhaps that’s all it was. And perhaps that was all someone like him was capable of. Oh sure, trace it back to hard parents, hard living, but how awful to come to the end and see that all you’ve been is another goddamned link in the chain that keeps out the happiness. And Pete is just like him. Everyone thinks he’s so successful and great, a chip on every square. And yet for all Stanley knows Pete could be as empty and hollow as that cheap chocolate Easter Bunny that poor weird child from next door was giving out last month along with Girl Scout cookies.
When he was a much younger man, he liked watching wrestling. It was a guilty pleasure and something he would never have wanted Martha or his colleagues to know any more than he would invite them in when he read Playboy and allowed his hand to satisfy in a way that Martha never had and never would. There was something in the reckless abandon in both acts that he loved and admired. He liked the way big burly men strapped themselves into nothing more than a jock, peroxided their hair or got big tattoos and then came out like animals sprung from a cage. He thought how it must feel good as hell to scream at the top of your lungs and hurl your body into somebody built like a concrete post, to breathe heavy and pound and slam and sweat. Yeah, it did have a lot in common with his sexual fantasies in those days, though the fantasies were all about women—strong, tough women. Not to diminish the sweet corn-fed-looking ones, the tea-cake service ladies and Martha was definitely one of them, but he liked the fantasy of a woman who could grip his wrists and hold him in place. He liked women like he saw on Roller Derby, but God knows that was a century ago.
It was the Saturday night after Martha died. Pete and his family had come and gone, done all the right things and all that needed doing.
“I don’t need you here, Ned,” he said. “What’s your problem?”
“I want to be here for you.” The boy’s voice cracked like he might’ve been twelve and there he was a forty-five-year-old divorced reformed druggie schoolteacher studying to be Curly in a low-rent production of Oklahoma, a show Stanley thinks is only rivaled in stupidity by Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Who cares what the surrey looks like or how goddamned high the corn is. Martha ate all that shit with a spoon and he was as tolerant as he could be, but a man has his limits for sure. He sure hated to see Lois Flowers decline so quickly and have to live over in the nursing wing, but he had sure as hell not missed those sing-alongs at dinnertime. She either sang ridiculous jazzed-up show tunes or beautiful old songs that nearly broke his heart.
“Don’t pity me, Ned. It’s unbecoming to both of us,” Stanley had said. “And you’ve done your time. Use your ‘get out of jail free’ card and just go away.” He went in his bedroom and slammed the door; he tried to read but couldn’t and there wasn’t a sound. He imagined Ned just stood there frozen long after the fact, like a snake will do once you startle it. Ned coiled up and ready to strike, only Stanley knew that was not true. Ned was a different man; the anger and the bitterness and the weak victim wash he’d lived in all those years, all dried up. So many nights, Stanley got himself to sleep with a tortured litany of all of his failings. He was a shitty father. Embroider it on a pillow. And he was a shitty husband. Paint it on the overpass of the interstate. And the God he prayed to on behalf of others was not someone he even knew or believed in. When Martha’s hospice volunteer, a young woman he sees coming and going out of the nursing building here at Pine Haven, came to their house, she told Stanley that Martha needed his help.
“She needs you to help her go,” she said. “She needs you to tell her it’s okay to die.”
“But it’s not okay to die,” he said, and he said it loud, so loud he is sure that Martha heard him even though she had been in a coma for days. Her breathing changed and there was a restlessness, limbs twitching.
“Please,” she whispered, and gripped his hand. “Help her.” It was just the two of them there. Pete was with his family at the Holiday Inn and Ned had gone to the grocery store and so he went and sat down, took Martha’s hand in his own. “Tell her,” the woman prompted and stepped back from the doorway. Outside the birds were singing and the winter sky was a clear pale blue, the color of those little boxes she bought when the boys were born. He leaned in close to Martha’s ear and whispered that he loved her and that he would miss her but that he understood it was time for her to go. And her eyes opened like something in a horror movie and that was the end. It was just like that. It was just that fast.
That stare. He tried to think of everything else in the world except that stare, but it kept coming back and waking him, shocking him out of the traces of light sleep. Regrets and regrets and then he heard the door open and then felt weight on the other side of the bed. And then Ned was there, defying him, disobeying him, stretched out in Martha’s place. Stanley faked sleep, letting his breath lighten, but with Ned’s presence his mind was able to wander, allowing him to step into a ring and beat the shit out of everything that he hated in his life. He would wrestle it all to the ground. He heard the announcer say so: Stanley Stone—hard as a rock, heart of granite and blood as cold as marble.
After a week of Ned lying there at night and their quiet breakfasts together that had become something Stanley looked forward to, he began thinking up his plan. He would slowly start to slip. He would ease himself into character, an actor on the stage. He would be obsessed with wrestling and just rude enough to keep people at a distance. He would not shave every morning and get a regular haircut as he had done for the past fifty years. He would convince his sons he couldn’t remember things like cholesterol medication or taking a shower; he would make them believe with great conviction that he needed to live in one of those retirement places and then everyone would be on his own, and if Ned had any chance of making it in life, he’d have the freedom to do so. It was a project that took many months, but it was successful. At first they were amused by their dad watching television. Other than the news and occasional major sport events, he had never watched television even when Martha begged him to join her. He learned a lot from watching television and he also had Ned drive him to Raleigh when the Wrestling Federation came to town, busloads of people screaming and cheering for the Undertaker and the Hardy Boys. He bought himself an Undertaker T-shirt and started wearing really short shorts around the house. He liked the way the Undertaker looked like Johnny Cash on steroids and so that’s what he thought of himself. He was Johnny back from the dead. He was the Undertaker dressed all in black.
It worked. He convinced them, and here he is—a nice little apartment with a great big bathroom designed for if and when he needs a wheelchair; three good meals a day, great cable television. What’s not to like? Ned still comes every day to check on him so Stanley makes sure to do something that keeps Ned at a distance and believing that this is the right and best choice. When Ned is around he always says rude things, which means he has to do it when Ned is not around as well, which is harder to do but necessary to keep everyone fooled. He has thought that if he had to, he could begin to dress like a wrestler—tight shorts and tank tops and such—but he is hoping he won’t have to go there. It has been hard enough for him to get used to doing and saying things that make people uncomfortable; occasionally, he has enjoyed it, but usually it just wears him out. He points to women with oxygen tanks and tells how he is responsible for their tragic circumstances, how he took their breath away. He burps the alphabet at the dinner table about once every two weeks, usually right after grace has been said over the PA system, which leaves some of the more confused ones staring up as if God himsel
f had said, Eat.
“How far can you get?” Toby asked one night, saying she once burped her way to m but it made her throw up so she hadn’t tried it since. “Z, of course,” he said, and he told her he is a man who always finishes what he starts.
“We got some new mares in the stable,” he told Ned recently, and waved his arm around the dining room, his pointed finger stopping to rest on that woman from Boston—Rachel Silverman. “There’s a tough broad,” he said, and resisted when Ned tried to shush him. “We got ’em all here on the ranch. A couple of high-stepping ponies, a hell of a lot of nags gone to glue, but that new one’s got some fire in her, haunches like a sack mule, but you can’t have it all now, can you?”
“Dad, let’s go to your room,” Ned whispered, and though Stanley would have liked nothing better, so aware of the young woman who had been Martha’s hospice volunteer in the doorway, to have shown reason at a time like that would have possibly undone too much hard work. He saw Ned and the young woman exchange embarrassed smiles; she knew who he was, but who knew if Ned would remember her. Ned was sobbing like a baby the afternoon Martha died.
“That’s the one I’m planning to mount,” Stanley said, and whispered to Ned, “Here I am, big Billygoat Gruff ready for some action.” He pumped his hips and surveyed the reaction around the room. The young food attendants giggled, something they would probably get in trouble for later. Most of the women just blushed and glared at him, Marge Walker rising from her chair like she was going to take action. Toby was the one who laughed. She was puffing on a fake cigarette and was standing close enough to hear what he had said.
“My money says she’ll throw you right off,” Toby said, and puffed harder, flicked the holder like there might be ashes on the end. She looked at Ned. “This your old man?” Ned nodded. “He’s a hoot.” She turned to Rachel who was wearing what looked like a black business suit with pink tennis shoes; it was her first month there. “Did you hear that, umm, what’s your name again?”
“Rachel. Rachel Silverman,” she said. “And I would most definitely throw him. I would throw him away.”
“You hear that, Rocky? She’ll throw your old white ass to the mat.”
“I love nothing better than a good bucking.” He winked at her, feeling so self-conscious and ridiculous he had to fall back on something he had planned to do at awkward times, which was to raise his arms and imitate that silly dance people used to do to that song “YMCA.” He could not count the number of times in his life when he had watched grown intelligent people do the alphabet to that stupid song and look like a bunch of silly idiots.
“Me, too,” Toby said, and laughed great big, kept puffing. “Buck away.”
“Dad, really.” Ned pulled Stanley on toward his apartment and Toby followed. “Yesterday he said he wanted to do a wrestling demo,” she said. “He says if he does I can be his manager. Name’s Toby. Toby Tyler.” She put her hand out and went back down the hall. Clearly she is his best audience member, not to mention a really good person.
“That’s one of my good friends,” he told Ned. “They say she’s queer but who knows and who cares? You know the Village People were queer. Remember that dance I was just doing?”
“Yes, Dad.” Ned said, and gripped his arm tighter.
“You aren’t queer, are you, son?” Stanley asked. “Been a long time since I’ve heard of you gettin a piece.” He knew he had gone too far, but sometimes he had no choice but to make him leave. “I’ll be damned. My son is a queer.”
“Would it matter?”
“Not if you’re happy. Mighty slim pickings in this town, though.”
“I’m not gay, Dad. I was married, remember?”
“Lots of gay people get married,” he said, and stopped to adjust his belt, avoiding going into his apartment. The show is so much harder to pull off when it is just the two of them. “They call it a beard.”
“I like women. I just haven’t met one.” Ned’s vein in his right cheek was showing, always a good sign that he would have to leave very soon or else lose his temper, which it seemed he had made some kind of pact or oath not to do.
“Well, there’s a cute one works here. Go on over there and find her. She’s the one who came when your mom died.”
Ned turned and Stanley realized he had sounded way too sane. “She tries every day to get me to fuck her and I keep telling her that I’m only interested in old pussy.”
“Dad.”
“Really. Someday when you get to be old you’ll understand, but what I have told her is that I got a young son who I bet would like to pin her to the mat. Oh shit, look at the time. It’s time for the rumble. I taped it. The Royal Rumble so either you got to go now or you have to promise to sit and not speak for the whole time.” Stanley stopped making eye contact and turned on the television as loud as it would go. Ned stood in the doorway a few more minutes and then finally said he would be back later. “I love you, Dad,” he said, and closed the door. And every day is the same. Same show. Same ending. He will have to do it again later this afternoon, but at least it is getting easier and it seems Ned does talk to more people these days; he’s a little more outgoing and one day the hospice girl even asked Stanley how his son was doing.
Stanley is glad Ned has finally bought his own place, a little house on the way to the beach. Still, he knows that the boy’s real idea of home is locked up in that house on the corner of Fifteenth and Winthrop. His heart is locked there, too, even though that house is gone as of a year ago, a Food Lion in its place. The boys were furious at him for selling so quickly and everyone lectured him about how he knew better than anyone how a person shouldn’t make major decisions like that in the aftermath of death, but he knew he couldn’t stand to look at it; he knew it would make it even harder for Ned to find his way, that he’d be like some old alley cat making his way back to the door again and again and again. The place felt terrible after Martha died, like he couldn’t even breathe, so he did everything quickly. He had her prize rosebushes lifted and given away, her favorite planted at her grave, which he has not visited since going there with Ned to plant it. But now, ever since Sadie Randolph invited Stanley to close his eyes and wander his own home, he has not been able to stop the journey. There is not a night to pass that Stanley doesn’t make his way through that house, the afghan and television and peace lilies. Martha always wanted a greenhouse, an expanse of light and glass to brighten the dark hallway. When she got sick he almost did it but then didn’t. Why bother now? he could imagine her saying, and wouldn’t that have been an awful ending? Why bother now that I won’t live through winter, now that we need all the money for this awful oxygen machine and the morphine that keeps me looped and reaching for things nobody else can see.
But now he lets himself imagine the joy he might have seen if he’d surprised her with what she really wanted, unasked, just given—a gift.
“Oh, Stanley, it’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.” And the sound of her voice in his head is more painful than anything he has ever allowed himself to imagine. He winces and is glad to open his eyes and find Ned gone. He doesn’t want Ned to get to the end and feel bad, sorry for all that he missed in life. He wants him in there with the thick of it—swimming, diving, claiming his own life and giving to it with all the gusto he has. Ned has done his time. He has more than earned a new life.
Stanley turns down the dark hallway where the greenhouse would have been and he stands in the doorway. There is the dog he promised and never got. The notebooks of numbers that would say when they could afford to do this or that—the stack of travel books on Martha’s bedside table, carefully marked with a Post-it to remind him of all the places they never went. Bermuda. She just wanted to go to Bermuda; you can practically see Bermuda from here and yet they never got there.
Life After Life Page 15