by Martin Riker
My chance finally came—and I was at last able to put this long period of geriatric television viewing behind me—one fateful day in 1989, when the television broke down. By then, a few important changes had occurred.
Lillian was still Lillian, a shell of her former shell, but Tanya had grown, during those years, slender and quite pretty. Also disappointing—for age had made her restless, and proximity to lazy people had made her lazy, and long hours of debilitatingly boring labor for indifferent employers had taught her that any attitude or action she put forth into the world would yield the same indifferent result. Whatever effort she made would not be rewarded, whatever kindness she mustered would not be reciprocated, and so why not retreat into adolescent narcissism and let everyone else fend for themselves? It filled me with sadness to see it, a sadness that was never entirely absent from my feelings toward Tanya then or later. Yet my sadness was also rather strongly tempered, both then and later, by the disappointment, irritation, and anger I often felt at her incorrigible behavior, including—at this point—when she began using Lillian’s room as a place to have sex with her hairy loser of a boyfriend, Donald.
I might as well describe him since he features later on. He was older than Tanya, though not by much. He had hair everywhere, long and greasy on his head, thick and wooly on his limbs and torso. His black leather jacket was so cracked it looked like it was peeling paint, and he lumbered about in the stupidest of boots. In general he was filthy and (one assumed) smelly, and in either case not at all the sort of person you would want to have sex with, or watch having sex. And yet here was Tanya, my once-innocent Tanya, locking Lillian’s door and sneaking this gorilla in from the patio, even though the rest of the staff were so disinterested I’m sure he could as easily have walked in through the main entrance. Lillian would be lying in bed, or turned in her wheelchair to face the corner, or just as often not turned away at all. Thus around three every afternoon I was made to witness their ugly, boring sex—and this was only one of the significant changes in our situation.
The other important change, which I suppose technically was first, since it was this change that made Tanya’s illicit sexcapades possible, was that Lillian’s medications (which of course Tanya administered) had increased in dosage to where Lillian herself was far beyond woozy, was in fact very close to catatonic. So medicated was her brain, by this time, that it was as if she no longer resided there at all. And perhaps you will not be entirely surprised when I tell you that one day I, Samuel Johnson, felt some feeling. I managed to make noises, to wiggle some fingers and toes. For a moment, it appeared I was back in business! Time to return to my son! And so on. If I only now mention this remarkable development, and even now am not making a big deal of it, that is because it quickly became clear that Lillian’s body was too physically decrepit to be able to do much with, regardless of whatever control my mind could muster. Standing up was out of the question, for example, or even dialing a telephone. And so what after many years of waiting ought to have been cause for great excitement became instead yet another variety of frustration (being so close to Unityville, and at long last technically capable, yet stranded in a body unfit for the trip!), just when I thought I had exhausted every variety there could be.
All this was the situation then—Lillian’s subdued but broken body, Tanya’s exhibitionist sex, my own feelings of age and isolation—when one day in 1989 the television broke down.
It broke down and it was not a very big deal. Lillian was the only one in the television room that morning, but Tanya checked in shortly after and discovered the problem. I wasn’t even disappointed, to be honest, since we had been watching so much television for so long—really we had done little more than sit before the television console for years by then. So when Tanya wheeled us over to the window to stare at average weather and an entirely ordinary lawn, I experienced this as a pleasant change. Plus, I had heard a nurse in the common room on the phone with a television repairman, so I knew it would be fixed soon. And sure enough, I had barely grown bored of the window before this repairman arrived.
I heard him before I saw him, huffing and puffing and doing things with his tools back behind me in the room. He struck me as a curious person, based on just his noises. I pictured him fat and sweaty, damping his brow on his shirtsleeve as he cursed, under heavy breath, in what sounded like pidgin German. In fact I had worked up a rather specific image of him based on just his noises, before Tanya returned to the community room to check on us and swiveled Lillian around to watch the repairman at his work. She left, he stood up from behind the television, and I saw: a very large man in overalls, with a gray mop of hair and a tackle box of tools, moving noisily through his routine, smirking in our direction without quite looking, speaking only in those Germanic puffs and mumbles. He was almost exactly as I had pictured! Yet my pleasure at the accuracy of my prediction was cut short as I realized—first as a question mark, then a double take, and finally as a rush of surety—that I knew this man. I had seen him before. He was older now, of course, and saggy; but having known so few people during my time on this planet, I would hardly be able to mistake him, whatever damage the decades had done. It was Abram. He looked awful. Probably I should have recognized him from his noises alone.
He had not gotten very far in his travels, I noticed. Indeed, I felt a little disappointed seeing him there, even though up until that instant Abram’s fate had never caused me even a moment’s concern. I suppose he at least pursued his passion, I thought, for he had found a life with television. In fact, I went on, he’s ended up better off than I would have guessed—had I even once bothered to guess how Abram had ended up. And as I watched him move through the motions of his trade, you will not be surprised to hear that I felt a great desire to speak to him. That is, before I even recognized the true opportunity his presence represented, I was seized by a strong desire to speak.
And the extraordinary thing was: It was possible. It was possible I could speak to Abram, with Lillian a medicated lump. This body that was mechanically capable of almost nothing still might be capable of making words, or the sounds of words, in the direction of Abram, and so: What does one say? Does one say: Hello, Abram?
“Hello, Abram.”
Except that of course I spoke these words out of lungs and through a throat and mouth so weak that they emerged hardly like words at all, but only indecipherable sounds. I mustered my strength (I mean my strength of will) and pushed them out a second time, dropping the superfluous hello and trying now with just:
“Abram.”
Which came out more like “Errrbrm.”
But was close enough, apparently, for him to look up.
“Pardon?”
“Erbrm,” I said. “Er Smmmmml Jrrnshn!”
Which obviously he did not understand at all.
“Samml Jrhnshn, Erbram! Frm Ooonertybrl!”
Now, I understand that this whole scene will seem a little ridiculous to anyone reading it. Suffice it to say that for me, at the time, it was the most serious thing in the world. And I went on this way, struggling to form vowels and coming slightly closer each time, until finally, after what seemed far longer than it should have taken (but then Abram never was the quickest), he did seem to comprehend at least that it was to him that Lillian was speaking, that she was even using his name, which caused him to look down in confusion at his shirtfront, as if to discover a name badge he had forgotten he was wearing. And when he saw no badge, this seemed only to confuse him more.
But it was not until I spoke of Emily and of the letter that Abram had written to us—“Yungins, yer wrert,” I quoted him. “Merny a nert-an-day haf Ah pert merserf a herdfer a thernkerns erbert thers terlerferssin, an vher gerd Cherstern merms an derds gert ercheyberry an knerckertwerst . . .”—it was only then that an anxious awareness crept into Abram’s befuddled expression, and his eyes passed through the various stages of incredulity as slowly but inescapably a tiny flicker of concern grew into a bonfire of understanding. Su
mmoning all my strength, then, I bellowed:
“Er Samml Jhnshn, Erbrm! Frm Ooonityberl!”
The sudden flush of blood from his ruddy cheeks and forehead, the stupor, the slackened jaws of disbelief—all this I can picture perfectly. I immediately understood: He thinks he is facing a ghost! A natural response I had for some reason not anticipated, and which for an instant, I have to admit, I found amusing. Of course, he was essentially correct. I had called myself many names over the years, but ghost was for some reason never one of them. It was true, though: I was a ghost! It was true, but meant nothing. Ghost is merely a word, after all, and I knew well enough what I was, and how harmless I was, how utterly ineffectual, even if Abram, unfortunately for him, did not.
Yet if my mind had been slow to anticipate Abram’s initial shock, it was rather despicably quick to register the power his fear gave me, which it (my mind) instantly decided to capitalize upon, and promptly and unabashedly concocted a means of exploiting. His body was preparing to run, after all—I could see it—and if he ran, I felt sure I would never get him back. There was little time to be reasonable or to attempt to explain to Abram the logistics of my circumstances, and thus appeal to his understanding and goodwill. There was only time to scare him into staying put.
“Dnnt go, Aabrm! Erf yer lerv heer I . . . I wll haunt youu frrrver!”
No doubt, too, my mind had by now sorted through its own initial surprises and come to realize the real reason I had reached out to Abram in the first place—a reason you, Reader, must have recognized right away. It was not nostalgia or the novelty of the situation. It was, obviously, that his presence reopened the possibility of returning to my son.
“Abrmmmm!” I strained.
“Shush you, Samuel Johnson,” pleaded Abram, “shush you!” in a shaky whisper. “A blaspheming demon I once were, and led you youngins astray the good Christian path, yay, but punished for these sins I have been ever since, with perpetual pains and tribulation! Moresohowever, in my heart I weren’t nary but a brother to you, Samuel, and vhen I learned me of your passing, and how it come about and how you’d left a son, vhy, thought me: poor Samuel. For long have I known tales of parents too soon from their children torneth, who boundeth theirselves to this vorld—”
“Srrrlence, Abrrm!”
“But Samuel, you must—”
“I serd srlence!” I bellowed (well, “bellowed”), having forgotten how irritating Abram’s voice and manner could be. “Yer herv been jerdged ber Gerd an fern wrrnting! Yer muss lissern vry crfully erf you wunt to suv yer mertl soul frm etrnal fers of herl!”
All this came out with quite a lot of spittle, and the fervency with which I delivered it caused Abram to cower and go silent and listen dumbly to the plan I began formulating right there before him.
My first thought was to have Abram go to Unityville and bring Samuel back here to me. Given Lillian’s condition, that struck me as the most obvious course of action. What I did not know, but which Abram now sheepishly informed me, was that he could no longer show his face in that town, under pain of an unspecified (by him—I assume the townspeople had specified it), apparently gruesome punishment. It seems that some years earlier, during a period of particularly bad luck, Abram had attempted to move back into the now-vacant “haus,” and some aspects of his plan had not gone precisely as intended. He was unforthcoming with details, which at any rate did not matter to me; what mattered was only that Abram was officially unwelcome in that place, and untrusted, so that even if he did return against the town’s prohibition, the chances of convincing Samuel to return here with him were prohibitively slim. Which meant we would need to get Lillian to Unityville. Which meant we were taking his truck.
So now the plan became:
There was an emergency exit from the television room to the front parking lot. I had never seen it opened but felt at least 75 percent certain it was not wired to an alarm. We would wait until we were alone in the television room (Lillian was very often left alone in the television room), at which point he would wheel Lillian out, strap her in, and off we go! Abram would drop her in Unityville, at the steps of the church, after which, as far as I was concerned, he could go about the rest of his time on the mortal plane free of demonic visitations or any other impositions from the spirit world.
“But Samuel,” Abram pleaded, “twould be kindernapping!”
“Rerther this,” I spat, “er else burn frvr in erternl herlfer!”
Why Abram would believe that I, even as a ghost, had control over eternal hellfire, I truly have no idea. Yet believe me he apparently did, and do as I bid, I had to assume he would. Unfortunately, as he now explained, the passenger side of his truck’s front seat was a disaster of tools, fast-food garbage, broken glass, and dangerous spring coils that had broken through the fabric, while the back bed was at that moment piled with old televisions, and, it being already late in the afternoon, it seemed best to just wait until morning. Borrowing a trick from Phil Williams, I instructed Abram to leave the nursing home’s television unfixed and to inform the nurses that he would come back the following day with a replacement tube or gadget.
The rest of that day and all of that night, I found myself in a state I’d known countless times before (or felt as if I had—in fact, it was only on those few previous return attempts I have told you about) as I peered forward across the short hours, picturing the events to come. This time around, I found myself less nervous than on previous occasions, perhaps even less enthusiastic—was I?—and I wondered why this would be. Had my earlier failures turned me cynical, world-weary? They had, of course, but this was only one aspect of my feelings. Nor was I worried about the slimness of my chances. In fact, as the hours passed, I began to worry things were going too well, that my calm was an ill omen, or worse, some punishable form of hubris . . . Thus it came as a great relief, when morning arrived, and Abram with his truck and tools, to rediscover my ordinary panic and to feel my ordinary anxieties return.
He arrived with a blanket, which he seemed to think he was going to toss over Lillian’s body, as if an enormous object being wheeled away would be somehow less conspicuous under a blanket. Tanya was a busybody that morning—she was irritatingly present—and there were others in the television room, so Abram had to continue tinkering or pretending to tinker with the television longer than seemed natural. He grew nervous and drew attention, and in general it was an arduous couple of hours before “games time” arrived, when everyone else left to play bingo in the cafeteria, and Abram and I were at last left alone.
He took up the blanket then, but I grunt-spitted at him to put it down, that eternal hellfire awaited anyone who tried to cover me with a blanket. He objected that an old woman in a wheelchair strapped into the bed of a truck barreling up Route 11 was bound to attract unwanted attention, which to be honest I had not considered, having in my mind pictured us only as far as the parking lot. I told him he could cover me with the blanket only after I was safely secured in the truck. Then there was no reason to wait, so we went.
What followed was a ludicrous action sequence, like some pathetic spoof of Magnum, P.I., and I think Lillian would have enjoyed it very much.
Up onto the truck bed and Abram roped us down, on went the blanket, and we were already backing out of his parking space—so, not yet moving forward toward the road—when I heard Tanya (which truly I wished I could have seen) yelling in a kind of hush-yell, a whisper-yell, and running toward us—too late! And Abram “kicked” into gear, he “peeled out,” we “hung a left” out of the parking lot, the blanket now slipping off Lillian’s head and gathering around her chin so I could see Tanya there in the lot, her gawping maw of disbelief, not screaming just standing there, even better than I had pictured with the blanket over my head . . . But then, then, when any normally panicked person would have run back into the building to call the police, Tanya, who was experiencing a very different sort of panic (I understood later that her response to this situation was entirely self-serving; that
despite her shock and confusion, some preconscious reptilian lobe of her brain had quickly calculated the possibility that Lillian, under these circumstances, might sober up enough to reveal, upon her rescue, Tanya’s illicit sexcapades with Donald)—Tanya, that is, jumped into a tiny car and started after us: and the chase was on! . . . Although I do not think Abram realized she was back there, or he might have driven faster. In fact he was driving unadventurously slowly—no Tom Selleck, our Abram! Of course he had delicate cargo . . . But meanwhile, Lillian’s blanket had fallen all the way to her shoulders, allowing me to experience every aspect of this very exciting sequence, the wind rushing over Lillian’s ears, and Tanya’s tiny bedraggled car puttering up to us, eventually overtaking us, screeching around the side to shout at Abram out her window (I could not turn to actually see her shouting nor make out individual words, but surely it was something like, “Pull over!”), and Abram, who (I was suddenly reminded) had never been anything but a disappointment, almost instantly gave up and pulled over and stopped there on the roadside, the blanket having now dropped to Lillian’s lap . . . A moment later they were both back behind the truck, where I could see them arguing, Tanya screaming and Abram crying giant baby tears and explaining himself indiscernibly, and . . . and this was the moment when Lillian died.