That Good Night

by Richard Probert

  THAT

  GOOD

  NIGHT

  THAT

  GOOD

  NIGHT

  RICHARD PROBERT

  THAT GOOD NIGHT

  Copyright © 2016 by Richard Probert

  FIRST EDITION

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.

  “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” By Dylan Thomas, from THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, copyright ©1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data On File

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  Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books

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  Printed in the United States of America

  Interior design by Mark Karis

  Cover Design by Michael Short

  To all the aging folks out there:

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  — DYLAN THOMAS, 1914–1953

  PROLOGUE

  Lieutenant Jim Dillingsworth was manning the radio when the call came in from NOAA. An EPIRB signal had been received from a vessel, position N 42 20.2; W 69 10.4, approximately 65 miles southeast of Boston. Lieutenant Dillingsworth scrambled Search and Rescue Team 6, led by Captain Sam Harrington. Within minutes, Captain Harrington had the copter airborne with co-pilot Douglas Percy, Petty Officer Jason Berte, and Seaman Tony Corcelli on board. With calm seas, bright skies, and little wind, Team 6 was relaxed, expecting the call to be bogus. Most were. It took less than fifteen minutes to spot the vessel, a sailboat with sails neatly furled. There was no sign of anyone on board. Using his VHF radio, Petty Officer Berte tried to raise the vessel as the helicopter hovered 150 feet on the yacht’s port side. No answer. They circled. No movement was detected. No sign of distress. Perhaps it was an unconscious sailor. Hovering on the yacht’s port side, Seaman Berte slung the winch cable outboard. Snapped securely in his harness, Seaman Corcelli was carefully lowered to the water. He unhooked and swam ten yards to the vessel. The boarding ladder was down, making boarding easy and without incident. He made his way from the swim platform onto the aft deck and into the cockpit. “Anyone aboard?” Corcelli called out. No answer. He moved toward the companionway. Peering in, he saw only a meticulously clean cabin. Again, he called out. No answer. Going below, Corcelli quickly searched the vessel. There was no sign of life. Seaman Corcelli reached for his handheld VHF radio.

  “Captain, this is Corcelli. Over.”

  “Corcelli, this is Captain Harringan. Over.”

  “The vessel has no one on board, sir. Vessel appears seaworthy. Over.”

  “Any sign of struggle? Over.”

  “Negative, Sir. There is a note addressed to USCG, sir. Over.”

  “Read it to me, Corcelli. Over.”

  To my Friends of the USCG:

  My name is Charles Lambert. I am now deceased, having taken my own life and buried myself at sea. I ask that no attempt be made to recover my body.

  The red-file contains my ships papers indicating that this vessel is fully owned by Adam and Roslyn Burris. Please contact their representative, one Baxter Hymlaw, Annapolis Yacht Brokers. 126 Port Road, Annapolis, Maryland.

  Please post the package as addressed to Abigail Tennera and the letter that is addressed to Arden Smith Esq.

  Thank you and best wishes,

  Charles Lambert

  “That’s it, sir. Over.”

  “This is Captain Harrington. Corcelli, remain on board. Can the vessel make port under its own power? Give the systems a going. Over.”

  “Roger that, sir. Stand-by.”

  Pause.

  “Captain, this is Corcelli. Fuel tanks show three-quarters full. Batteries fully charged, navigation system operable. Bilge clean and dry. Engine running, all gauges showing positive. Over.”

  “Roger that, Corcelli. I’m sending Berte down to assist. Monitor Channels 16 and 22. See you back in port. Oh, Corcelli, water and food on board? Over.”

  “Fit for a king, sir. Over.”

  “Have a good voyage. Captain Harrington out.”

  “Corcelli standing-by on 22 and 16. Out.”

  INTRODUCTION

  Dear Reader,

  I met Charlie Lambert in Boston. I was there on a photo shooting assignment for National Geographic, working on a study of Boston’s waterfront. Let’s just say at this point, that Charlie saved me, my camera, my self-esteem, and much more.

  During my few days with Charlie, he told me very little about his past. Mostly we talked about his sailing and my photography. We had discussions more suited to young lovers than two mature adults.

  What follows is an account of Charlie’s determination to live his final years as he wished. From escaping the confines of a nursing home to courageously, singlehandedly voyaging on a sailboat, this account of self-discovery at the age of eighty-four is written in his own hand. Upon his death, he had his writings sent to me accompanied by the note printed below. I contacted a friend at the National Geographic, who put me in contact with Jared Bevins, a freelance editor. Jared was able to transform the musings of Charlie’s aging mind with its vacillating ebb and flow of present, past and future into a coherent narrative while maintaining the blossoming re-emergence of Charlie’s spirit from the confines of nursing home life to the freedom of wind and water. There was also a digital recorder that Charlie sent to me which belonged to an insurance investigator by the name of Justin Roberts, who was hired to locate Charlie after he escaped the nursing home. Using the memos that Investigator Roberts entered into the recorder, Jared edited, and added dialogue to the recording to offer the reader a clearer picture of Charlie’s continued battle to live life as he wanted to live it.

  I trust that you, the reader, will discover that aging, with all its trials and tribulations, can be and should be the most rewarding and adventurous part of life. I’ve included below the personal note that Charlie sent to me.

  Sincerely,

  Abigail Tennera

  Dear Abigail,

  I am sending you my musings from my sailing venture aboard That Good Night. When I was in the nursing home, I started to keep a journal, but once on the water, I spent quiet evenings expanding my writings into what I hoped would be a book. Do with them as you will. I am also including in the package a little black box that looks and acts like a belt buckle. Actually it’s a digital recording device that belonged to an investigator that dogged me from the moment I landed in Maine. The post on the buckle operates the recorder. You’ll catch on, it’s really simple. I had hoped that my voyage would have taken longer, but death had other ideas. At least I died the way I wanted to and not in some purgatorial nursing home.

  It was wonderful to have you as such a sensitive last love. You brought spring to my winter.

  Love,

  Charlie


  FRIDAY, JUNE 22

  Shelia, the night nurse’s aide, just squished by, her rubber cross-trainers compressed by overload. Hippo sized, she wears a god-awful smock done up in pinks and blues, imprinted with lambs and kittens; it’s draped around her bulk as if Cristo turned fashion designer. White fluorescence skims along the terrazzo floor, sneaking under my door like a thin sheet of crackled pond ice. A low incessant hum lies like fog, blanketing anything familiar. This is nighttime, every nighttime at Sunset Home. I hate being here.

  My name is Charlie Lambert. I’m 84 years old. Currently, I’m a resident in this wretched place. Really, it’s more like a repository for old folks; there’s little left of anyone’s personality here. In an attempt to keep myself sane, I’ve latched onto the idea of writing down my thoughts using a notebook I found in Howard Denner’s trash the day he died.

  Howard lived and died in the room next to mine. I’d visit him every morning just to chat. Dementia had torn a hole in his memory leaving behind snippets of his life: a farm boy, a runner in college, an engineer, a love for American Beauty roses, a woman named Clara. Howard’s deceased wife’s name was Doreen. Dementia is sometimes like a heavy dose of truth serum. In Howard’s case, his love affair with Clara came out in what was dubbed as “My Story Time.” Using volunteers, Sunset encouraged clients to join together to talk about their former lives. Marianne Suchance, a well-meaning but entirely inept volunteer in her thirties, led the session, which was offered once a week. When it came time for Howard to tell a story from his life, he began by describing in great detail his secret love life with Clara. I wasn’t there, but the word through the grapevine was that ol’ Howard’s confessional was very graphic—none of those romance novel euphemisms for him. The sordid details of Howard’s affair turned deep-seated boredom into smiles and tears as clients vicariously dug into their own hidden memories. Hidden thoughts and desires become prey to the beasts lurking in demented minds, ever ready to pounce, dignity notwithstanding. For those in nursing homes there is no future, only the past, as sketchy as it may be.

  The notebook that Howard left in his room was blank except for the first page. Scrawled there were the words, My Darling Dear. That was it; the rest of the page was empty. I tore it off and put it on Howard’s bedside stand next to his nursing-home-issued plastic, pale-green water carafe. Maybe Darling Dear would somehow find it there, but I doubted it. People living here seldom had any Darling Dears other than in distant echoes.

  I’ve been in this place for six months. My life is whitewashed, my memory bleached. I miss the simple things. Common things like the sound of my refrigerator, or my squeaky front door, or the motor gearing up on my home’s heating system, the growl of the sump pump, the bark of a neighbor’s dog, a car going by. All replaced by raspy coughs and mournful groans, a hacking, old, wheezing ensemble improvising its own requiem. I lie in bed, lights out at nine, the exception being the hallway’s cold light sneaking under my door. And the ever-present night light—bright enough for nurse Shelia to check on me, like I might sneak off to some place for a beer or to get laid like an old alley cat. I think back on these six months like a felon recalling his time in the joint. Only my crime was getting old. Judge and jury were my two boys and their co-conspiring spouses. What the hell ever happened to extended family? You bust your ass, raise kids, and they take it all like they’re entitled from birth on to have everything you have and more.

  My two boys and their greedy wives began taking notes of my “dementia” shortly after Lori died. Lori and I were married for fifty-two years. She was my childhood sweetheart. We loved, we struggled like everybody else, we overcame day to day bumps in the road, we built a wonderful life, and then she was gone. And it was sudden. We all prepare for death when we get old, but let me tell you, when it happens, it can come on as fast as a firing-squad bullet. Or linger, withering us like forgotten fruit on the vine. Old folks in homes like Sunset await death. There is no next day or the next month because planning ahead is a futile exercise. Visits from family and whatever friends are left, happen less and less as time goes by. There is definitely no living for tomorrow. It’s more like hour to hour—long, unforgiving hours of waiting for the Grim Reaper and his stone-sharpened scythe.

  I met Lori in high school. She and I were on a team collecting scrap metal for the war effort, WWII, that is. Who the hell remembers that these days? Lori was five-foot-two, had blue eyes, had a great ass, and could lift fifty pounds of scrap metal like it was nothing. I’d watch Lori bend over to grab hold of a chunk of rusted steel, and for the next week and a half be in a terrible way. I didn’t need pin-ups to stir my adolescent yearnings, I had Lori. Courting back then was different than it is today. It might take a week or more just to get up enough courage to kiss the girl. And even then, first-tries were summarily rejected. There were all sorts of expected courtesies in those days, like opening doors, carrying books, being a down and outright slave and, of course, getting the approval of the parents before even thinking about taking a walk together. Is it better today with getting sex as easy as picking fruit off a tree? I’m not so sure. But I think when you come down to it, romance has always trumped sex and I hope that it still does.

  The boys said that maybe I was depressed and needed help. Are you kidding! Of course I was depressed. Sad perhaps describes it better. Damn sad. How would they know what my days were like? After Lori’s funeral, off they went. One to North Carolina, the other to Kansas. “C’mon and live with us for awhile,” they offered half-heartedly. Sure, tear me away from the familiar just when I lose the most familiar. And since when does living with your kids lift one out of depression? And what is for a while supposed to mean? Until one or the other of us can’t stand it anymore! Anyway, they didn’t mean it. A gesture, at best. “You want to do something,” I wanted to say to them, “then call me once in a while. Maybe invite me on a vacation like on some Disneyesque cruise ship or rafting down the Colorado. But don’t ask me to come and live with you for awhile. No, let me alone to figure it all out.” To me, it made no sense to visit anyone, sleeping in a strange bed, being an interloper in someone else’s routine. But apparently, my desires weren’t anyone’s priorities but my own. My adjustment to post-Lori was quickly noted as going off the deep end. I hate to admit it, but I’m convinced my kids had a plan: get power of attorney, commit the old man to a managed care facility, and take whatever they want. I know that sounds like paranoia, but they built a case, hired a lawyer and hauled me before a judge.

  Enlisted as watchdogs by my caring kids, my neighbors reported that I only went out after ten at night. When Lori was still alive, we were asleep well before that time, so my late night forays were seen as a sign of instability. The truth was I enjoyed going out late to buy groceries and other things. For one thing, there was less traffic. For another, there were no screaming kids and their hectic moms clogging the aisles. I liked night people more than day people. Things were more relaxed. What the hell do people expect? You’re married for half a century and then in an instant you’re single. What? I’m supposed to be unchanged, go about life like everything’s rosy-pink? Well, it isn’t. Major changes in life are just that, major and the older you get the more anxiety comes with it. Did my kids or neighbors or the minister expect my life to simply go on as if nothing happened? One neighbor pimped me the idea of hiring her cousin as a live-in. Can you believe it? Replace Lori with a live-in?

  Another item on the indictment was leaving the stove burner on. I admit that this can be a serious matter, but I was pretty careful and only slipped up now and then. And what’s supposed to happen? If the damn pot burns, the smoke alarm would scream like a nervous Banshee and the fire-department shows up. That only happened once. A little smoke damage and it’s as though I planned to burn down the neighborhood! And if there was no pot on the stove, the house would just get a little warmer.

  There were other things that raised suspicion that I was losing it. Like on one of their spying visits, my daugh
ters-in-law found jelly pieces in the mayonnaise, or me wearing two different socks, not always zipping my fly, not shaving every damned day, and the clincher, banging the back wall of the garage with my car that put a little bulge in the living room wall. Hell, it’s my wall. Okay, there were two other things, both of which included getting lost. Who hasn’t in their life gotten off track? Heading north instead of south is no big deal. You turn around and go back. The first time it only took a few hours to get home. The second time it took almost two days. But I did get home. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?

  At first the judge seemed to be favoring my side. He told my kids that their observations were more typical of depression than dementia. The judge asked me if I felt in command. I replied, “Sure I am.”

  He went on, “Mr. Lambert, the evidence before me seems to indicate that your life will straighten out, given time but before I rule on the matter, would you be willing to submit to a psychological assessment?”

  I guess that I should have bowed my head and said yes, but hell if I was going to have some shrink dig into my grey matter. It’s none of anybody’s business what goes on in old Charlie’s brain. Back in my elementary school days, I was caught in the girl’s bathroom. For that infraction of exercising pubescent curiosity, I had to go to counseling. What a waste of time. I swore then that no shrink was ever going to get me ever again. So, I told the judge, “No, sir. I will not submit myself to that foolishness.”

  The judge looked at me like the principal did back in elementary school. “Mr. Lambert, your denial of my request, which was made entirely for your benefit, places a considerable burden on the court. On the one hand, I understand your reluctance. On the other, your welfare trumps that by a large margin. Are you sure that you want to refuse a third-party evaluation?”

  “Yep, I’m certain. All I want to do is go home and be left alone. Left to live my life where I’ve always lived it. My bed, my rugs, my stuff. Just let me get on with it, Judge.”