Looking for Garbo

by Jon James Miller

  Then Rebecca took my hand, brought me to my feet and led me into my mother’s room. Her hand was warm and reassuring as it held mine. I liked Rebecca. There was none of that ugly pity discernable on her kind face.

  “Jimbo,” Mom said. Not “Hey, Jimbo,” her usual catchphrase.

  Mom was short of breath, her mouth hidden behind an oxygen mask fogged with condensation. The mask cut into her face, and I could tell it was hurting her. Rebecca lifted me onto a chair, so I could stand next to my mother’s bed and look down on her.

  “I’ll be right outside,” Rebecca said and departed behind the door. The door I had spent two eternal days of my young life on the other side of.

  Now I was inside with Mom. All was well again. She opened her hand, the one nearest mine. I minded the tubes coming out of it and grasped onto her. Her skin was cold and clammy.

  “I’m worried, Jimbo,” she said.

  Her brow furrowed above the mask. Then huge orbs of clear liquid formed in the corner of her eyes as she looked up to me. I braced myself, determined not to cry. Mom needed me to be strong. I’d sooner pee myself than cry.

  “Come to me,” she said.

  I gingerly crawled into bed and lay down beside her. Put my head on her chest. There was barely anything to her, but I embraced what was left and cried in spite of myself. She brought both arms down around me and held me with her remaining strength.

  “You’re different,” she explained amid gasps for breath. “In a wonderful, curious way.” She clasped me tighter. “That makes you so vulnerable.”

  I sensed her pain and hugged back. She rested her chin on my head, and our tears ran together.

  “I’d take you with me,” she said, and I felt her chest compress with the effort of speech. “If I could … you won’t survive without me.”

  Mom’s chest never rose again. I listened with my left ear pressed up against her chest. Listened to her heart beat slow, then stop. Rebecca, the nice nurse, found us however many minutes later lying in our embrace. A dead woman protecting her only living kin. A burned-out chrysalis surrounding the unformed creature inside.

  Mom was twenty-six when she died. For years after, I worried the weight of my head against her heart had been what killed her. Mom had wanted to die like Garbo did in Camille, beautifully and in the arms of her young lover, Robert Taylor. Instead, she died weak and wasted away holding her ten-year-old son, tormented by the thought of leaving him behind. Died with the weight of worry over how I would survive without her. Of leaving me alone.

  “Get to the heart of things,” my mom used to say to me. “If you love someone, get to the heart of things and stay put. Don’t ever stray.”

  Mom had lived by her own words her entire, short life. I had the same X-Ray vision she had had into people’s hearts. Right up until the day I listened to hers stop. Ever since then I’d been turning my head. Turning away and refusing to listen to any heart that came in my direction. That was the only way I knew how to survive. To avoid people. Not love or be loved. Ever again.

  Between my skill for invisibility and sixth sense to distance myself right before people tried to get close, I’d grown up in the shadows. I’d been able to protect my own broken heart and it only cost me everything. The last fifteen years or so had been abrupt stops and starts as I navigated between my desire to be in the glamorous movie industry my mother had idolized and avoiding meaningful interactions with people. It’s definitely the reason I found Martin, or he found me. He was as incapable of making human connections as I was intent on avoiding them. We were perfect for each other. Two dysfunctional peas in a rotting pod.

  Seth had known I was closed off. That I wasn’t looking to make friends. Maybe that was why he waited to fill me in. To fill in the blanks of our familial bond. Maybe Seth figured his Garbo story was our true bond. The only way to get me to stop avoiding my own life and start listening to love.

  Mom’s heart began to beat in my ears while I gazed down at Seth’s body. And I finally realized what the old man had been saying all along. How I needed to spread my wings and learn to fly on my own. Become someone my mom could stop worrying about and be proud of. Finally become my own man.

  I turned from Seth’s body to watch snow falling silently out the window. I knew I’d been brought here for a reason. Believed that the story I’d been told held a greater truth. I’d come to Seth a cynic about life and been transformed into a true believer. A Keeper of the Light.

  The cynics of this world would demand proof before they’d let themselves believe in such a fantastical story. They’d cry out for substantiation. A body of evidence to dissect. I’d been that way once, a long thirty minutes ago.

  I turned from the snow back to Seth’s corpse. Went to the foot of his bed and quickly undid the covers. I took a deep breath then exposed the dead man’s feet. Sure enough, Seth was missing both his pinky toes. The digits, now stumps covered in age-old scar tissue, had been severed at the base.

  Seth had been good to his word. He had never sold his Garbo story. Not even when it came down to losing his precious piggies to Bernie and Toes back in New York City. Probably walked right into their hangout upon returning stateside and offered them up to the thugs. Seth was a new man after Garbo. She had changed him forever. And, good to his word, his love for her never faded. Losing a few toes could never change that.

  Now I had to be just as strong in my convictions. From now on, no more bargaining with scumbags for crumbs to subsist on. I knew I had to take a stand in my own life before I could convince anyone of Garbo’s last stand. And in the process, I’d bring Garbo back down to earth like Seth had. Make the connection live once more.

  Bring her back for one more encore.

  26. HOME, JAMES JAMES

  I had to believe Seth had waited to tell me he was my grandfather on film, not so much for the shock value but more for the record. If the story held true and I was indeed his kin, Martin couldn’t touch me. I would have won our little pissing match and been officially done with him in a way neither of us could have predicted. The way Seth had always intended.

  The next morning, I was officially discharged from Mercy Hospital in Norfolk, Connecticut. It felt strange to sit on my hospital bed dressed in my street clothes. Maybe the fact that my ass was covered up again gave me a false sense of security. Or maybe it was the hot nurse assigned to escort me out.

  Sarah came into view in the open door frame, pushing an empty wheelchair in front of her. She looked at me, gestured her head down to the chair.

  “Need a ride, mister?” she said acting every bit the sexy chauffer. I smiled at her tongue-in-cheek, come-hither routine. I could get used to being pushed around.

  I looked at Seth’s empty bed. Images of the previous night sprang forth like flashcards, one after another. Learning that Seth was family still stunned the morning after. And knowing he and I had shared more in common than a bloodline changed the way I looked at my world. Seth had taught me more about life in three days than I had learned in the last two decades. My eyes were opened wide and still adjusting to a new light.

  But the image that stuck with me the most, the one that kept repeating over and over inside my mind, was one I hadn’t seen with my own eyes at all. I was in the back of that seaplane watching Young Seth from behind while he turned that plane around and headed back to certain death. He would confront Nazis in a kamikaze run that ended up saving Garbo, screwing Nick, and giving himself a second chance at life. Is that what it took? Seth had turned and faced the darkness, certain he would fail, only to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. Is that what I needed to do?

  “Time to go,” Sarah called from the open doorway.

  Every time I looked at her now, I knew she was the one person I could trust. When Seth had confessed, then met his maker before Tom’s video camera, I had looked in Sarah’s eyes and realized she believed in me. Believed in the two of us. I wouldn’t let her down now. Not ever.

  I looked up at Sarah as she opened the footres
ts of the old-school wheelchair, then tapped the cracking leather back beckoning me to get in. She saw me hesitate. She saw everything now that I’d stepped into the light.

  “Everything alright, Tiger?” she said.

  “Yeah. I just realized I’m not really sure where I’m going.”

  Sarah came around the side of the wheelchair and sat down with me on the bed. She lifted her arm and put it over my shoulder, while we both stared at the door entrance to the room.

  “Well, where do you want to go?”

  I turned toward her. Her profile was strong and white like alabaster with a sprinkling of freckles. I was hesitating again. I felt the old, familiar sensation of fear crawling up my spine. Fear of rejection. Fear of wanting something that I didn’t deserve. Fear of her finding out that I might be related to old Seth Moseley but that’s where the similarities ended.

  Sarah turned to me, like a statue of a Greek goddess come alive before my eyes. I blinked, waiting for the inevitable fatal blow.

  “I think you should stay with me.” She said.

  “You do?”

  “Why not? Do you have someplace better to go?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then,” she said. “Then get your cute tukkis in this wheelchair. I don’t get paid by the hour, ya know.”

  We got up off my bed and I grabbed the handle of the plastic bag marked “Personal Effects.” There wasn’t much of anything in it, except for a change of clothes that I’d brought with me from LA. I’d traveled light on my trip back East with Martin. Always afraid of losing what few possessions I had. Always ending up carrying Martin’s crap for him instead.

  Dear Martin. When Sarah and I wheeled by his doorway, he was in his hospital bed on his cell phone, leaving his agent yet another message. I raised my hand up to halt my driver.

  “I need to make a pit stop,” I said.

  “You don’t need to do this.” Sarah put a warm hand on my shoulder to keep me in my seat. “Not now.”

  Ah, I loved this woman. Sarah was giving me the easy out. And only a couple days before, I would have taken her up on it. Turned tail and run, in fact. Anything to avoid a confrontation. Then I saw again in my mind the vision of Seth turning the plane. But now I was in front of those controls. I was steering straight for what I wanted. And what I wanted was to be free of Martin, once and for all.

  “Only be a moment.” I got up out of the wheelchair under my own power. Now on my own two feet, I leaned in and kissed Sarah on the cheek. “Keep the engine running.”

  By the looks of him, Martin was pre-pissed when I stepped into his room. Come to think of it, Martin always looked pissed. He was the only human I knew who left a debris trail behind him. A swath of destruction through every person’s life he touched. Including his own.

  “Motherfucker,” he said into his cell phone, then slammed the flip-phone shut with a metallic snap. He threw it on the night table, next to a bouquet of big-cup, hothouse yellow tulips arranged with baby’s breath and fern. “Fucking cell reception is for shit in this God-forsaken place.”

  Martin turned and looked up at me with a dull, slightly ponderous expression. Slow-witted that he was, he could tell something was different with the picture his brain was receiving. Whether it was me back in my street clothes, or the new air of confidence I exuded that tipped him off, I just couldn’t say. “What the fuck is your problem?” he asked.

  I smiled. No, he didn’t disappoint.

  “Nice flowers,” I said, calm and diplomatic. “From your wife?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said and looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. “She’s never spent a nickel of her own money on me. They’re from my agent. A reminder that it’s my own funeral if I don’t get back to L.A. and get this fucking show done.”

  Los Angeles. Martin couldn’t stop thinking about LA. Like he would suffocate away from the smog for too long. No doubt the abundance of fresh oxygen here was messing with his mind. Meanwhile, I hadn’t thought of L.A. for an entire forty-eight hours and felt fine.

  “I’m leaving, Martin,” I said. “For good.”

  Martin’s face registered shock. Then just as quick, he became stone-faced. But try as he might, he couldn’t iron out his crinkled brow. His tell that he was in serious panic mode.

  “Going back to L.A. without me, huh?” he said. “Well, think again.”

  I took one more step into the room and reminded myself that this wasn’t a sophisticated individual. Martin was the guy who had once eaten half a dozen stuffed tamales before I could inform him that he should unwrap them from their corn husks first. He had ended up in the bathroom for two days straight.

  “I’m not going back to Los Angeles.” I raised my chin a little higher. “At least, not right away.”

  “Fine,” he said, his forehead crinkled into a capital-M. “I’ve got enough footage of the old fuck anyway. Who needs you?”

  Martin couldn’t see Sarah waiting for me in the hallway. I turned and beckoned for her to join us. Wanted her to bear witness to what I had to say next. I watched the beauty enter Martin’s room, come and stand next to me. Then I turned my attention back to Martin in his bed.

  “I wouldn’t try and make anything up,” I warned.

  Martin looked at me. Then Sarah. Then back at me. He wasn’t having too much luck piecing the puzzle together.

  “Why?” Martin said. “The old guy’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Seth has passed. But there is his heir to consider.”

  “His heir?” Martin chuckled, put both hands up and behind his head. He thought he’d caught me bluffing. “Don’t fuck with me, James. You told me he didn’t have anyone. You said.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Martin had always relied on me to tell him the truth. And I had, even when it had been to my own detriment.

  “That was before,” I said. “Things are different now. His life rights revert to his surviving family member.”

  Martin looked at me then to Sarah, standing beside me. I’d added a layer of complexity to our little pissing match he hadn’t anticipated. Martin lowered his arms and defaulted to his fall-back position: When in doubt, lash out.

  “Who? Rhonda Rottencrotch here?”

  “No, Martin.” I said. “Me.”

  Martin looked back at me. Scanned my facial features, grew even more confused. Then confusion quickly gave way to anger.

  “Bullshit,” he said, spittle flying from his lips.

  Then Sarah took my hand in her own. She made a commanding presence. Her height, beautiful face and the way she filled out her scrubs conveyed to Martin everything he needed to know. What he didn’t know and what I’d learned and now loved most about her was that she was the smartest person in the room.

  “He’s telling the truth,” she said. “And you’ll be remembered as the schmuck who missed out on the story of the century.”

  Martin didn’t need brains to tell Sarah wasn’t bluffing. She had that way about her. That no-nonsense way that cut through the bullshit like a warm blade through butter. God, what a turn-on.

  “Now, wait a second,” Martin stuttered. “Wait, wait, wait just a second here. Let’s not punch a gifted horse in the mouth. We had a deal, James and me.”

  Before I could respond, Sarah turned, grabbed me by the collar and brought my lips to hers. Kissed me like I’d never been kissed before. A deep passionate kiss that tickled my toes and made me weak in the knees. Literally. She drew back and turned to look into Martin’s eyes.

  “James has a new deal now,” she said. Sarah licked her thumb and gently wiped red lipstick residue from my upper lip. “Come on, partner.”

  Sarah and I turned, joined hands and headed for the door. Meanwhile, Martin ranted on about being stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere because of me. How the doctors said he’d probably lose both his piggy toes to frostbite. I smiled at the thought.

  Sarah and I walked straight out of the room without a backward glance. Then Sarah
turned and closed the door on Martin. Shut out the sound of his voice. I had emerged a free man. Free and full of confidence for the first time.

  Sarah, back behind the wheelchair, winked then slapped the bottom of the wheelchair seat.

  “Get in, Jimbo.”

  I got in and we started down the hallway toward the bright light of the lobby. And I closed my eyes and imagined I was in the seaplane Seth Moseley, my grandfather, flew through the heavens with a naked Garbo asleep in the front seat. The one he may have landed but had never come down from.

  Sarah pushed my wheelchair to the lobby of the hospital, where Tom, the Video Guy was waiting. I could see his van parked out front. He had been gracious enough to offer me a ride the night before, but my discharge was delayed until this morning. I got up and received an unexpected bear hug from the mountain man. Sarah looked on and laughed.

  “What now?” he said.

  I turned to Sarah. She was calling the shots, and I was only too happy to follow her lead.

  “Now,” she said, “we go to the bank.”

  Sarah produced a safe-deposit box key from the pocket of her uniform. She held the key up high, between her index and forefinger. The metal jigsaw-puzzle piece with “Diebold” stamped into it glistened in the morning light.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Video Guy said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Seth’s safe deposit box key. He gave it to me yesterday, and I’m guessing there’s something in it we all need to see.”

  “Not me,” Video Guy said. “I’ve got another gig across town. I just came by to say goodbye.”

  Then Video Guy, the loveable bear of a guy, fell silent. Sarah was first. Stepped up and gave him a great big hug and a kiss. His cheeks blushed the color of his beard. I was no good with goodbyes. So I shook his hand and handed him a personal check I knew was no good.

  “If you could wait a week to cash that,” I said. “Maybe two.”

  “Don’t worry,” Video Guy said and smiled. Stole a glance at Sarah. “I know where to find you. But hey, don’t forget this.”

  He reached in his jacket pocket and produced a plain manila envelope, handed it to me. I grabbed the envelope and looked inside. A mini-digital-video cassette marked “Seth Moseley Interview” the date scribbled in thick, black Sharpie on the bottom.