by Joe Hill
The congressman heard the door, lifted one corner of the washcloth, saw Lee, and smiled with half his mouth. He dropped the washcloth back into place.
“There you are,” the congressman said. “I almost didn’t leave that message, because I knew you’d worry and come see me tonight, and I didn’t want to bother you on your Friday evening. I take up too much of your life as it is. You should be out on the town with a girl.” He spoke in the soft, loving tones of a man on his deathbed speaking to a favorite son. It was not the first time Lee had heard him talking so, or the first time he’d tended to him while he suffered one of his migraines. The congressman’s headaches were closely associated with fund-raising and bad poll numbers. They’d been coming in bunches lately. Not a dozen people in the state knew it, but early next year the congressman would announce that he intended to run for governor against an incumbent who had won the last election in a landslide but had slid badly in the polls in the years since. Any time her approval rating ticked up more than three points, the congressman needed to dry-swallow some Motrin and go lie down. He had never leaned on Lee’s calm so much.
“That was the plan,” Lee said, “but she bailed on me, and you’re twice as cute, so no loss.”
The congressman wheezed with laughter. Lee sat on the coffee table, cattycorner to him.
“Who died?” Lee asked.
“The governor’s husband,” the congressman said.
Lee hesitated, then said, “Boy, I hope you’re kidding.”
The congressman lifted the washcloth again. “He has Lou Gehrig’s. ALS. Was just diagnosed. There’ll be a press conference tomorrow. They’ve been married twenty years next week. Isn’t that the most awful thing?”
Lee had been ready for some bad internal-polling numbers, or maybe to learn that the Portsmouth Herald was going to run an unflattering story about the congressman (or the girls—there’d been more than a few of those). He needed a moment to process this one, though.
“God,” Lee said.
“What I said. It started with a thumb that wouldn’t stop twitching. Now it’s both hands. The course of the disease has apparently been quite rapid. You know not the day or the hour, do you?”
“No, sir.”
They sat together in silence. The TV played.
“My best friend in grammar school, his father had it,” the congressman said. “The poor man would sit there in his easy chair in front of the TV, twitching like a fish on a hook, and sounding half the time like he was being choked to death by the Invisible Man. I am so sorry for them. I can’t imagine what I’d do if one of the girls got sick. Do you want to pray for them with me, Lee?”
Not even a little, Lee thought, but he got on his knees at the coffee table and put his hands together and waited. The congressman got down on the floor next to him and bowed his head. Lee closed his eyes to concentrate, to work it through. It would boost her approval rating, for starters; personal tragedies were always good for a few thousand sympathy votes. Also, health care had always been her best issue, and this would play into that, give her a way to make the subject personal. Finally, it was difficult enough as it was to run against a woman, hard not to look like a chauvinist, a bully. But running against one who was heroically caring for an infirm spouse—who knew how that would play out over a campaign? Depended on the media, maybe, what angle they decided to work. Was there any angle that didn’t wind up as a net plus for her? Maybe. Lee thought there was at least one possibility worth praying for—at least one way to fix it.
After a while the congressman sighed, an indication that prayer time was over. They continued to kneel together, quite companionably.
“Do you think I shouldn’t run?” the congressman asked. “Out of decency?”
“Her husband’s illness is one kind of tragedy,” Lee said. “Her policies are another. It’s not just about her. It’s about everyone in the state.”
The congressman shuddered and said, “I’m ashamed to even be thinking about it. As if the only thing that matters are my goddamned political ambitions. Sin of pride, Lee. Sin of pride.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe she’ll decide she needs to step down to care for him, won’t run next time out, in which case better you than anyone else.”
The congressman shuddered again. “We shouldn’t talk this way. Not tonight. I really do feel indecent. This is a man’s life and health. Whether I decide to run for governor or not is the least important thing in the world.” He rocked forward on his knees, staring blankly at the TV. Licked his lips. Then said, “If she did step down, though, maybe it would be irresponsible not to run.”
“Oh, God, yes,” Lee said. “Can you imagine if you didn’t go for it and Bill Flores was elected governor? They’d be teaching sex ed in kindergarten, passing out rubbers to six-year-olds. Okay, kids, raise your hand if you think you know how to spell ‘sodomy.’”
“Stop,” the congressman said, but he was laughing. “You’re awful.”
“You weren’t even going to announce for five months,” Lee said. “A lot can happen in a year. People aren’t going to vote for her because her husband is sick. The sick spouse didn’t help John Edwards in this state. Shoot, it probably hurt him. He looked like he was putting his career ahead of his wife’s health.” Already thinking that it would look even worse, a woman giving speeches while her husband did a spastic dance in a wheelchair next to the podium. It would be a bad visual, and would people really want to vote for two more years of that on their TV? Or a woman who thought winning an election was more important than caring for her husband? “People vote the issues, not out of sympathy.” A lie; people voted their nerve endings. That was how to fix it, to quietly, indirectly use her husband’s illness to make her look that much more uncaring, that much less like a lady. There was always a way to fix it. “It’ll be old news by the time you get into things. People will be ready to change the subject.”
But Lee wasn’t sure the congressman was listening anymore. He was squinting at the TV. Terry Perrish was slumped back in his chair, playing dead, his head cocked at an unnatural angle. His guest, the skinny English rock star in the black leather jacket, made the sign of the cross over his body.
“Aren’t you friends with him? Terry Perrish?”
“More his brother. Ig. They’re all wonderful people, though, the Perrish family. They were everything to me, growing up.”
“I’ve never met them. The Perrish family.”
“I think they lean Democrat.”
“People vote for friends before party,” the congressman said. “Maybe we could all be friends.” He punched Lee in the shoulder, as if at a sudden idea. He seemed to have forgotten about his migraine. “Wouldn’t it be something to announce the run for the governor’s seat on Terry Perrish’s show next year?”
“It would. It sure would,” Lee said.
“Think there’s any way to fix it?”
“Why don’t I take him out the next time he’s around,” Lee said, “and put in the good word for you. See what happens.”
“Sure,” the congressman said. “You do that. Paint the town red. Do it on my dime.” He sighed. “You cheer me up. I’m a very blessed man, and I know it. And you are one of those blessings, Lee.” He looked at Lee with eyes that twinkled in a grandfatherly sort of way. He could do it on cue, make those Santa Claus eyes. “You know, Lee, you aren’t too young to run for Congress yourself. My seat is going to be empty in a couple years, one way or another. You have very magnetic qualities. You’re good-looking and honest. You have a good personal story of redemption through Christ. You tell a mean joke.”
“I don’t think so. I’m happy with the work I’m doing now—for you. I don’t think running for office is my true calling,” Lee said, and without any embarrassment at all added, “I don’t believe that’s what the Lord wants of me.”
“That’s too bad,” said the congressman. “The party could use you, and there’s no telling how high you could climb. Heck, g
ive yourself a chance—you could be our next Reagan.”
“Nah,” Lee said. “I’d rather be the next Karl Rove.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
HIS MOTHER DIDN’T HAVE A LOT to say at the end. Lee wasn’t sure how much she knew in the final weeks. Most days she spoke variations of only one word, her voice crazed and cracking: “Thirst! Thirst-ee!” Her eyes straining from their sockets. Lee would sit by the bed, naked in the heat, reading a magazine. By midday it was ninety-five degrees in the bedroom, maybe fifteen degrees hotter under the piled comforters. His mother didn’t always seem to know Lee was in the room with her. She stared at the ceiling, her weak arms struggling pitifully under the blankets, like a woman lost overboard, flailing to tread water. Other times her great eyes would roll in their sockets to point a pleading, terrified look in Lee’s direction. Lee would sip his iced tea and pay no mind.
Some days, after changing a diaper, Lee would forget to put on a new one, and leave his mother naked from the waist down under the covers. When she peed herself, she would begin to call “Wet! Wet! Oh, God, Lee! Wet myself!” Lee was never in a hurry to change her sheets, a laborious, tiresome process. Her pee smelled bad, like carrots, like kidney failure. When Lee did change the sheets, he would ball up the wet linens and then press them down over his mother’s face while she howled in a confused and strangled voice. Which was after all what his mother had done to him, rubbing his face in the sheets when he wet them. Her way of teaching him not to piss the bed, a problem in his youth.
His mother, however, had a single lucid moment toward the end of May, after weeks of incoherence—a dangerous moment of clarity. Lee had awoken before dawn in his bedroom on the second floor. He didn’t know what had stirred him, only that something was wrong. He sat up on his elbows, listening intently to the stillness. It was before five, and there was a faint show of false dawn graying the sky outside. The window was open a crack, and he could smell new grass, freshly budded trees. The air wafting in had a warm, humid weight to it. If it was warm already, the day was going to be a scorcher, especially in the guest room, where he was finding out if it was possible to slow-cook an old woman. Finally he heard something, a soft thud downstairs, followed by a sound like someone scraping shoes on a plastic mat.
He rose and padded quietly downstairs to check on his mother. He thought he’d find her asleep, or maybe staring blankly at the ceiling. He didn’t think he’d find her rolled on her left side, fumbling with one withered claw for the phone. She had knocked the receiver out of the cradle, and it was hanging to the floor by the coiled beige wire. She had collected a bunch of the wire in one hand, trying to pull the receiver up to where she could reach it, and it was swinging back and forth, scraping the floor, occasionally batting lightly against the night table.
His mother stopped trying to collect the wire when she saw Lee standing there. Her harrowed, sunken face was calm, almost expectant. She had once had thick, honey-colored hair, which for years she’d kept short but full, her curls feathering her shoulders. Farrah Fawcett hair. Now, though, she was balding, thin silver strands combed sideways across her liver-spotted dome.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Lee asked.
“Making a call.”
“Who were you going to call?” As he spoke, he registered the clarity in her voice and knew that she had, impossibly, surfaced from her dementia for the moment.
His mother gave him a long blank stare, then said, “What are you?” Partially surfaced anyway.
“Lee. Don’t you know me?”
“You aren’t him. Lee is out walking on the fence. I told him not to. I said he’d pay the devil for it, but he can’t help himself.”
Lee crossed the room and set the phone back in the cradle. Leaving an operating phone almost in arm’s reach had been idiotically careless, and never mind her condition.
As he bent forward to unplug the phone from the wall, though, his mother reached out and grabbed his wrist. Lee almost screamed, he was so surprised at the ferocious strength in her gaunt and gnarled fingers.
“I’m going to die anyway,” she said. “Why do you want me to suffer? Why don’t you just stand back and let it happen?”
Lee said, “Because I wouldn’t learn anything if I just let it happen.”
He expected another question, but instead his mother said, in an almost satisfied voice, “Yes. That’s right. Learn about what?”
“If there are limits.”
“To what I can survive?” his mother asked, and then went on, “No. No, that’s not it. You mean limits to what you can do.” She sank back into her pillows—and Lee was surprised to see she was smiling in a knowing sort of way. “You aren’t Lee. Lee is on the fence. If I catch him walking on that fence again, he’ll feel the back of my hand. He’s been told.”
She inhaled deeply, and her eyelids sank shut. He thought maybe she was settling down to go back to sleep—she often slipped into unconsciousness quite rapidly—but then she spoke again. There was a musing tone in her thin, old voice. “Ordered an espresso maker from a catalog one time. I think it might have been the Sharper Image. Pretty little thing, lot of copper trim. I waited a couple weeks, and it finally showed up on the doorstep. I sliced open the box, and would you believe it? There was nothing in there but packaging. Eighty-nine dollars for bubble wrap and Styrofoam. Someone must’ve gone to sleep in the espresso-machine factory.” She exhaled a long, satisfied breath.
“And I care…why?” Lee asked.
“Because it’s the same with you,” she said, opening her great shining eyes and turning her head to stare at him. Her smile widened to show what teeth remained, small and yellow and uneven, and she started to laugh. “You ought to ask for your money back. You got gypped. You’re just packaging. Just a good-looking box with nothing in it.” Her laughter was harsh and broken and gasping.
“Stop laughing at me,” Lee said, which made his mother laugh more, and she didn’t stop until Lee gave her a double dose of morphine. Then he went into the kitchen and drank a Bloody Mary with a lot of pepper, his hand shaking as he held the glass.
The urge was strong in Lee to pour his mother a scalding mug of salt water and make her drink the whole thing. Drown her with it.
Instead, though, he let her be; if anything, he looked after her with particular care for a week, running the fan all day, changing her sheets regularly, keeping fresh flowers in the room and the TV on. He was especially careful to administer the morphine on schedule, didn’t want her going lucid again when the nurse was in the house. Telling tales out of school about her treatment when she was alone with her son. But his anxieties were misplaced; his mother was never clear in the head again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HE REMEMBERED THE FENCE. He did not remember much about the two years they lived in West Bucksport, Maine—did not, for example, even remember why they moved there, a place at the ass end of nowhere, a small town where his parents knew no one. He did not recall why they had returned to Gideon. But he remembered the fence, and the feral tom that came from the corn, and the night he stopped the moon from falling out of the sky.
The tom came out of the corn at dusk. The second or third time it appeared in their backyard, crying softly, Lee’s mother went outside to greet it. She had a tin of sardines, and she put it on the ground and waited as the cat crept close. The tom set upon the sardines as if he had not eaten in days—and maybe he hadn’t—swallowing silver fish in a series of swift, jerky head motions. Then he twined smoothly between Kathy Tourneau’s ankles, purring in a satisfied sort of way. It was a somehow rusty-sounding purr, as if the cat were out of practice being happy.
But when Lee’s mother bent to scratch behind his ears, the tom slashed the back of her hand, laying the flesh open in long red lines. She shrieked and kicked him, and he ran, turning over the sardine tin in his haste to get away.
She wore a white bandage on her hand for a week and scarred badly. She carried her marks from the run-in with the tom all the re
st of her life. The next time the cat came out of the corn, yowling for attention, she threw a frying pan at it, and it vanished back into the rows.
There were a dozen rows behind the Bucksport house, an acre of low, ratty corn. His parents hadn’t planted it and did nothing to tend it. They weren’t farmers, weren’t even inclined to garden. Lee’s mother picked some in August, tried to steam a few ears, but none of them could eat it. It was tasteless, chewy, and hard. Lee’s father laughed and said it was corn for pigs.
By October the stalks were dried out and brown and dead, a lot of them broken and tilting. Lee loved them, loved the aromatic scent of them on the cold fall air, loved to sneak through the narrow lanes between the rows, with the leaves rasping dryly around him. Years later he remembered loving them, even if he couldn’t exactly recall how that love felt. For the adult Lee Tourneau, trying to remember his enthusiasm for the corn was a little like trying to get full on the memory of a good meal.
Where the tom spent the balance of his day was unknown. He didn’t belong to the neighbors. He didn’t belong to anyone. Lee’s mother said he was feral. She said the word “feral” in the same spitting, ugly tone she used to refer to The Winterhaus, the bar Lee’s father stopped at every night for a drink (or two, or three) on his way home from work.
The tomcat’s ribs were visible in his sides, and his black fur was missing in hunks, to show obscene patches of pink, scabby skin, and his furry balls were as big as shooter marbles, so big they jostled back and forth between his hind legs when he walked. One eye was green, the other white, giving him a look of partial blindness. Lee’s mother instructed her only son to stay away from the creature, not to pet him under any circumstances, and not to trust him.
“He won’t learn to like you,” she said. “He’s past the point where he can learn to feel for people. He’s not interested in you or anyone, and never will be. He only turns up hoping we’ll put something out for him, and if we don’t feed him, he’ll stop coming around.”