by Tom Corbett
“You are nuts, but that’s not news.” After more thought, Rachel added. “In the end, it obviously didn’t last. What went wrong?”
“No,” he replied thoughtfully, “it didn’t last, but not on my account. After a while, I imagined this just might go the distance. I was content for sure. Then I started noticing changes, the kind of incremental differences that a numbnuts like me might miss for a while but not forever. Eventually, I sucked it up and asked. Someone had come into her life, a woman she thought she loved, had a crush on at least, some legal scholar she met at a professional conference. They started collaborating, and the intellectual connection became physical. Well, as fond as she was of me, she knew the difference between loving a clown and really being emotionally taken with someone. I could never compete with that. For her, it was time. She would just face her family and the world. I supported her as much as I could, but these are things you face alone. I think that is one of the immutable truths in life, we all face the important things by ourselves. I do love her in my own way, and she loves me.”
“So, you are still friends?”
“Of course, that will never end. We care for one another. I helped her through the transition, we will always be close. She is at the University of Toronto now with her partner. As she knew it would be, it wasn’t easy at first, but her family came around. They had grown to like me. I found I am good with mothers, the daughters not so much. I wound up explaining those things to them that she could not. They listened to me, can you believe that?”
They walked in silence for a few minutes before Rachel broke the quiet. “Let me ask one of the big questions. Have you ever been in love with anyone…aside from yourself of course?”
“You think I love myself, that’s interesting? I suppose someone might believe that. Now that I think on it, I’m quite lovable. After all, it is hard to improve on perfection.” More silence followed as he thought on that question, but to his increasing discomfort, it was apparent that Rachel was willing to wait for as long as it took. She had learned one thing from training her own pet dogs. You give the command once and then wait. No need to repeat; the animal knows. Of course, Rachel considered that maybe her brother wasn’t as educable as her pets. That disturbing possibility slipped through her mind, but she toughed it out.
“And?” She prompted, breaking her training rule.
“Yeah, Eleni.” His words barely rose to the level of a whisper.
“Eleni? I don’t remember her. Do I know her?”
“You never met her, she was from my college days. But she is out of the picture.” Her brother’s nonresponse caught her by surprise. The old Apostle’s Creed she learned as a child jumped into her head, the part where “born to the Virgin Mary” was followed by “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” It was as if all the important stuff, Christ’s teachings were irrelevant, all reduced to a single comma. To Rachel’s ear, his words came across as “I loved her and she left.” The things unsaid often are what a story is all about. But something inside told her to let it go, at least for now. “Like Mo and I discuss all the time, women are nothing but trouble, even where it should be easy like in the sack. Even when you get them going, it takes forever to get them over the top. Shit, you start foreplay in January and they finally come in April. You’re too pooped by then to get off yourself.” Josh was chuckling at his obvious attempt at deflection through his ever-present wit when her fist slammed into his stomach once again. Taken with his own humor, he had let his guard down. “Damn, that really does hurt,” he expelled through the pain.
“Well, you’re disgusting…you deserve a little pain.”
“Nonsense,” he gasped, “I have written testimonials from scores of women saying I’m really quite good.” At the same time, he inched his way beyond her reach.
“You can’t evade, deflect, and somehow misdirect your life from me anymore. Before I assault you to the point where they will need to put a toe tag on your cold bawd, I’m going to find out who you are. For better or worse, I am taking you apart, limb by limb, secret by secret, disgusting habit by disgusting habit. Do you understand, mister? Do you?”
The sun was up fully now. It glistened off the snow that capped the mountains across the water. After a few minutes, he had fully recovered and pointed toward the distant peaks. “You know, Rachel, you can ski in the morning here and swim in the afternoon.” He had told many visitors that over the years. What made him such a chamber of commerce spokesperson? He didn’t ski and seldom ever swam. “Not evading. Just sharing something special with you. Never meant to spend my life here, another thing that just kind of happened, one of those choices that was not quite a decision.”
He loved Vancouver and Victoria across the channel. When he first visited decades ago, he recalled reading that that there were more restaurants per capita, including more ethnic restaurants, than any other city in North America. He usually doubted the veracity of such claims, attributing such to overexuberant assertions by the chamber of commerce, but it seemed credible at first glance. But then he noticed something. He would pass Indian, Chinese, Indonesian, and even African restaurants that were mostly empty and then come across a McDonald’s that was packed. Oh well. But he slowly realized that physical beauty or even a cornucopia of culinary delights are not what make this place special.
It was the people, he thought to himself. A mosaic of tribes crowded into this part of the world yet seemed to sustain a sense of harmony and civility. You step off a curb, and cars would screech to a halt to let you cross. In Boston, where he grew up, it was different. Step off the curb, and motorists would aim for you. Then back up over your body one more time for the inconvenience you had caused them in the first place. He had read recently that the worst drivers in the United States could be found in Beantown while the second worst were found just down the road in Worcester, Massachusetts. There were no doubts in Josh’s mind as to the veracity of such designations.
Rachel waited for him to take the lead, and eventually he did. “Rach, did I ever tell you how much you remind me of Mom?”
“The ice maiden…thanks a lot.”
“Well, not so much that, but maybe you’ve got something there, now that you mention it.” He chuckled but sucked in his tummy, anticipating another blow that never came. “Part of it is the physical thing. You have the same light hair, the delicate facial features, the bluish eyes that are not quite blue. And you are slim like her, you probably never had an extra pound. But I was thinking of something else. For me, mom was discipline and focus and purpose, everything dad was not. She kept us together and made sure we never went astray. Not that she had to worry about you. I still recall you, night after night, sitting at the kitchen table buried in books while I was out marauding the neighborhood with my friends.”
“Bull, you were not that different from me,” she retorted, realizing to her dismay that she inexplicitly had let a compliment escape. “I saw you reading a lot.”
“No, not in the same way. I buried myself in history, biographies, and a bit of fiction when I wasn’t checking out the dirty mags in my room. But you were serious. You loved math and science and the tough subjects. I escaped into the past and other people’s lives. You were already thinking of the future, what you wanted to be and accomplish. I guess even then I was running away through the vicarious stimulation of other people’s lives. Hmm, as I think back, I never heard you talk about boys, saw you date. Did you ever date back then?”
“Oh, a bit,” she retorted weakly. “But they were all so useless, just horny little shits.”
“No argument from me. Why do you think all dads want to lock up their daughters? They know how boys are since they were one once. Hell, if I had a daughter, I would fit her out with a chastity belt at thirteen, make that twelve. They still make those, I hope?” He noticed that Rachel smiled. “But my point is that I was always so proud of you. You were what I was not. I was a dreamer, someone who easily got lost within a fantasy world that could be conjured up by my f
ertile imagination. I did have that.” He paused as if reaching further back. “I remember Mom looking at you as you studied, your eyes furrowed in such concentration. I knew what she was thinking, at least I think I did. You were going to be what she never had a shot at achieving. You were her hope. She was so very proud of you.”
They crossed over Marine Drive. “I never knew what she thought, about me most of all. She never said a word.” Rachel kept her head down while Josh tried to decipher whether his sister could have missed what was so obvious to him. Then he got his answer. “Why didn’t she say something? Why didn’t anyone say something. I felt so…different, like a freak. I never felt I fit in…to everything around me. How strange that we can’t see what’s right in front of us.”
“I doubt she knew how to express love or anything positive—she had been scarred by so much stuff early in life. Damn, I wish I had said something back then. Maybe if you hadn’t been so busy screwing with my lame attempts to seduce the young lasses, which I could screw up on my own by the way, I would have reminded you just how special you were. Hell, maybe I was even a bit jealous. Early on, you talked about becoming a doctor. Did you know that mom would somehow get that into conversations with her friends? Come to think of it, did she have friends? She was so distant, remote. Let us say her acquaintances. Anyways, she would go on about her daughter being so smart. ‘She is going to be a doctor, you know.’ And everyone would nod because they knew it was likely to be true even though success for a girl in our neighborhood was not getting knocked up by age sixteen. Dad was different, of course. Daughters were different—it was the boys who counted. Girls were destined to be good wives. But boys could carry on the family name and pride. Even when I was around, I could not figure him out all the time. He looked to me for some validation of his life, and you know what I did, broke his heart.”
“Dad loved you,” she tried to sound confident, but it came out forced. “But I never knew how you felt, you never ever said…” Her voice caught and she stopped. “We were so typically Irish. Neither of us would admit to a weakness or emotion if it whacked us upside the head.”
“Hey, my excuse is that I was a young stupid shit.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now I’m an old stupid shit.”
Rachel stopped to look at him, her eyes full of moisture. “I adored you. To me, you understood the world. You had passion and conviction and a sense of what was right that, I don’t know, inspired me. That’s what made what happened all so hard, so disappointing. I almost fell apart. I did, for a while.”
“But you didn’t, not really or surely not for long. I never stopped following you and what you were accomplishing. First it was through friends and later through the internet. I knew how you were doing in med school at Johns Hopkins, the Boston internship, the Chicago residency, all top spots. I would brag to my friends about my brainy sister, the one who had to make my parents proud because I was such a screwup. I was the one that was supposed to make Dad’s world okay. He couldn’t do it for himself, and Mom never let him forget that. But he had this son that would right all wrongs and correct all shortcomings. His son would go to Boston College, maybe even Notre Dame, on a football scholarship and there would be no limits.”
Rachel sensed his pain, and a real tear slid down her cheek. “But then the football stopped. And you and Dad, well, it just got worse. I never really understood, but I think that did spur me on. I felt I had to do better to make up for things I never understood but could feel. It was not hard to feel stuff when the screaming and banging doors would go on night after night. God, how many times I cried myself to sleep.”
“Listen, Rach, giving up football was a lot more than leaving the game behind. I had to. Dad kept pumping me up. ‘Practice harder, hit harder, you can do it, son. Hey, kiddo, scouts will be at the game. This is it, time to man up and show them just how tough you are. No weakness and no quarter.’ We were beating the crap out of St. Peter’s High—they were not very good in any case. Who would have cared if they had scored one crummy touchdown? We were up by forty points by then. I was out of the game, it as a blowout. Then they got down to our goal line. I just ran out to our huddle during a time out and told my substitute to get off the field. Those bastards were not going to score on my watch. I never really thought about it, just did it. Then, I saw this undersized halfback circle the right side of their line toward the end zone. I could’ve just taken him down so easily, probably blown the kid over with a big breath. It would have been so simple. But no, I had to drive him into the ground, show the scouts what a badass I was. I had to prove I was worthy of wearing the Irish blue and gold. My ticket to Catholic heaven, Notre Dame, was on the line. Hell, the scout probably had left by then. More important, Dad’s love was on the line. So, I dug deep and sprung at this poor shit with total fury. Almost from the first impact, I heard some sickening cry. Maybe I’m making this up, but I sensed his body go limp. Still, I jumped up all proud and juiced. The kid just lay there. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word. I just looked, just stared. I had crippled him. I knew it at that very moment…” then he stopped.
“What? Rachel asked in a soft voice.
“That football was over for me. They would all say that the hit was clean or whatever. What BS. What was I doing? What was I becoming? Standing on that field, it just hit me. Maybe it was the silence, it was never silent on a football field. It was at that moment. The kid said nothing, the fans did not make a sound, my team mates looked away. Whatever, it just hit me in that instant. I was becoming someone I loathed. What I never told anyone is that there were two cripples on the field that day, that poor son-of-a-bitch and me.”
Rachel took him into her arms and clenched him tightly. He could sense the salty tears against his neck.
“Hey, Rach, what’s with all these biblical names—Rachel and Elizabeth and Joshua and Jeremiah. Really, what’s up with that crap? I mean, what Catholic family even reads the goddamn Bible?”
“Nice try, bozo,” she said, wiping away tear. “Are we just a bit panicky that you might have to deal with a few tears? Okay, you’ve been good, so I’ll play along. I really should reward such behavior. I’ m quite good at shaping behavior, having trained more than one dog myself. While they are usually more trainable than men, the same techniques do apply.”
“What? You know why we’re stuck with biblical names that I seem destined never to hear, unless you are merely delaying in order to gin up some obvious BS explanation.”
“No,” she protested. “I do have thoughts on the biblical names. It was Mom. She had some deep spiritual instincts, mostly coming from her background, the family history at least. There are things that leaked out of her after you left. I became her sole confidante though it’s not like we had mother -daughter chats all that often. Sometimes, I wondered if she rejected both of us for your sins. She couldn’t talk to Dad, was too private to share much with friends, and was surprisingly lonely. She seemed so strong, so independent, but I guess we all have that needy side. In any case, she slowly started sharing just a bit with me. Thing is, there was much more to her than we ever saw. To us, she was the ice maiden—so self-contained. But she had all this history and a whole life about which we barely had a clue.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, she wasn’t always Catholic. We knew so little about her early years, her family. She would say things, drop little clues. Her folks migrated around, mostly fleeing the civil strife and wars that racked the area. There were the Reds and the Whites, periodic skirmishes between Finland and Russia, all kinds of nationalistic, ideological, and ethnic strife. Some estimate that ten million perished in the several years of civil wars following the Bolshevik revolution.”
“Jesus, when did you learn a little history?”
“Shush and listen, you’re such a nimrod. In any case, her grandmother was Jewish, I figured out, and the whole family lived in Lithuania, a small village near Vilna, when she was a child. Their original homel
and is lost, they moved a lot, driven by fear. A local pogrom pushed them from the Vilna area back into Russia. Then, not all that long after, the post–Commie revolution civil war drove them into Finland. From the bits that she shared, her dad was killed in Russia or just died. That was not entirely clear, but I think he did fight. My guess is that he sided with the Reds but might have switched sides later which, now that I think on it, might just explain your twisted politics. Just surviving was a struggle.”
“I bet.” He exhaled.
“So, mom’s mother had three kids, that’s my best guess, and no husband. But she must at least have been a looker, where mom likely got her looks. She nailed this guy in Finland, a fisherman I guess. Thus, the family name of Maki and the Lutheran religion. Ora and her mom were survivors. Guess you had to be in those days.”
“Okay, so how did Ora meet Dad? He certainly never fished, and why would he have ever gone to Finland?”
“Now that is an interesting question. It became clear to the world that both Hitler and Stalin had bad ideas about what to do with small countries like Finland. Mom wanted out, and apparently, nothing was going to stop her. She was going to be a survivor. Somehow, she made it to England. Her stepdad had a boat, maybe that got her there. But I’ve another thought. As I noted, we assumed our grandmother remarried in Finland and that is where the Maki name came from. But maybe mom married someone her stepdad knew, someone who also had a boat. Maybe mom brought the Maki name into the equation and her mother was never a Maki. We know nothing of the family from those days, whether they are alive or what they looked like. Nothing, just a black hole. Think about it—why would mom’s stepdad not get the whole family out if there was a real threat? My guess is that mom, as a teen, hooked up with some guy and used him to get out.”