Beyond the Bedroom Wall

by Larry Woiwode

  "You've talked to him?"

  "Not yet. But that I knew before I got here. He looks upset."

  "Yes."

  "Elaine, too. With Elaine it's compounded by nerves. Have you talked with your dad?"

  "Some. He seems to be working it out in his own way.”

  "He's probably as upset about Mother at the moment He was always closest to her of any of us, closer even than Davey, I'd guess. Martin was close to Dad, of course, but he's always been closer to Mother."

  This had never occurred to Jerome in such bare terms.

  "Dad told me once that he had to stop and consider before he talked to you and your brothers, so he didn't call you Fred or Jay or Vince or my name or any of the others. Did he ever call you by any of our names?"

  "Not me."

  "Not even in the last year?”

  "No."

  "Good. Do you think there was much pain involved?”

  "I just talked to the doctor, and it wouldn't seem so."

  "I hope not. Why suffer at the end when that's all your life has been?" He put a hand on Jerome's shoulder. "It's good to see you. I guess we better go in."

  The living room was filled with people not really speaking but sending up a murmur of sound. Elaine came up to him, biting her lower lip, her unguarded eyes enlarged by gray glasses, and her close-cropped hair, as gray as his grandmother's, scratched his neck as she took him in her arms and said, "Oh, Jerome, what are we going to do?"

  Rose Marie, the aunt Martita mentioned, usually flighty and exuberant, with the looks of a college girl although she'd had eleven children in nearly as many years ("And I won't quit till I have twelve," she said once. "What the hell"), was in a chair with a handkerchief in one hand, her head bowed, a wisp of dark hair clinging to her wet cheek.

  Fred's wife, Gayle, was dressed in a stylish black suit and stood with her back against a wall, her jaw clenched, her hands so restless the silver bracelets on her wrists clashed and sent riverlike reflections over the ceiling. Laura and Ginny and Susan and Marie were on a couch with an afghan over it, and next to them was Davey's new wife, Rose, huge with her first pregnancy, Carl, who had fleshy and fuller cheeks than Tommy, and was built as big as him, sat bunched on another couch between Paul, Rose Marie's oldest son, and Fred Jr., all three of whom were freshmen in high school. Younger cousins, from eleven to one and a half, stood around the edges of the room and along the stairwell to the second story, wide-eyed and constrained, as if afraid of what their parents would do next.

  Neighbors and friends were moving in and out, carrying pies and pastries and casseroles, and setting them down on the dining-room table, and then going up to Jerome's grandmother to say a few words. She was at the opposite end of the room, on the piano bench, and wouldn't look up at them. Davey stood next to her, his back against the piano, his hands clasped below his belt, staring at the floor, and his profile, at a level with the service and graduation pictures on the piano top, sent a joylessness back through the years-old smiles.

  Martin was on the bench beside his mother, holding her hand as he spoke close to her ear. Her glasses were removed and her face, swollen and discolored, looked naked, as at birth. She kept shaking her head and pushing at Martin, whose lips were brown in his bloodless face, and then he looked in appeal around the room with blind eyes, causing Marie, on the couch, to double over, and Ginny to cry, "Oh, Dad!" Their grandmother began rocking on the bench and Jerome heard, as if from the fretwork of strings behind rather than a human source, the water-blocked wail he'd heard in the garage, which grew in volume and other-worldliness until Elaine cried "Mother!" and the other women wailed and joined in. Holy Lord.

  He started toward the bench, but his grandmother lifted her altered face and cried. "Leave me alone! Let me go!" She pushed at Martin as if to push him aside, and said, "No, no, no, no, no!" and then stood and her knees started buckling beneath her. Martin and Davey caught her and helped her back to the bench.

  "Let me go see him!"

  "Mother, Mother, please," Martin said. "He's close."

  "If I can't see him, I want to see Martin."

  "Mother, please."

  She struck her fists on her thighs like a child, and then began beating on Martin's chest and cried, "I want to see Martin!"

  "Mother, it's me. I'm here."

  "I want to see him."

  Jerome sank in a vacant chair, felt eyes on him, and realized how many people were on their feet, and was on his in a second; it was the reclining rocker known by family members, even the youngest grandchild—uh-oh, God!—as Grandpa's Chair. He'd seen his grandfather rise from it during a televised boxing match, shifting and feinting for the fighter he favored until he found himself, unfulfilled and abashed, within inches of the screen, gray-silver light filming his forearms, a ghost of a shadow over him, and then the finishing dot receding like a face into infinity. And this was home to him?

  *

  Jerome lay in bed, the blue oblong above him, and punished and rearranged his pillow, trying to find its position for the night, and wondered if he should get up and read for an hour, or promise himself to, and so fall asleep.

  "Jerome?"

  His father's voice came from the stairwell.

  "Yes."

  "Would you come downstairs?"

  What could it be at this hour? He found his glasses,

  pulled on his pants, and was at the bottom of the stairs before he realized there was a sensation in his legs as of sand quavering and circulating and recirculating somewhere below his knees, and nearly fell. His father was at the kitchen table, in a bathrobe, and on the tabletop was an empty mug and a sheaf of papers covered in a large, primary hand.

  "I couldn't sleep," his father said.

  "Me either."

  "I figured as much. I got some things about Grandpa written down."

  "Good."

  "Well, I'm not sure if they are or not. I just put down what came to mind, and thought you might suggest what to use. Here." He shoved the sheaf of papers in front of Jerome. "I'll go over to the other side."

  Jerome picked up the top sheet, blue-lined with a red margin down it, school paper, and for a while merely stared at his father's writing, so regular and well formed, with every letter slanting at the same angle, it seemed out of a penmanship manual from an earlier time. All those years of teaching, of writing on blackboards and erasing it, hadn't affected the care he took to write well.

  The top of the page was titled "Recollections and sayings and reactions of my father, C. J. C. Neumiller," and Jerome saw that his father's hand had faltered writing the name.

  I can’t recall his ever suggesting a vocation for

  any of us kids when we were young, but I do recall

  his saying, "I don't care what you become in life,

  so long as you're honest and do your best at it." About

  school marks, he often said, "I'm interested in only

  one grade on your report card — deportment. If that's

  good, then the rest of it likely will be too."

  Jerome's father had then drawn three stars.

  I remember a letter I received from him while I

  was in college, and a statement he made in it. It was

  in the spring, the spring of '37, I believe, and there

  were severe floods in most of the country then. As I

  recall it, he said, "It seems to me that man spends

  most of this time trying to improve on God's workmanship,

  building levees, dams, etc., and then all at once God reminds him

  who drew the plans."

  * * *

  He was deeply religious but never discussed his

  religion with anyone. He said, "A man's religion and

  family life are private affairs. Everybody knows his politics.”

  * * *

  He was deeply devoted to the praying of the Rosary

  and many times while driving from job to job

  would have one in his hand
on the steering wheel.

  You can be sure he was praying it.

  * * *

  He was a man who definitely lived in the present

  at all times. It fascinated him that most of what we

  think of as modern conveniences — the automobile, the

  airplane, the telephone, electric lights and appliances,

  radio and TV — were largely developed in his time.

  He often said, "Some people talk about the good old days.

  They can have them.”

  * * *

  He understood young people, their problems, hopes,

  and desires. Many times when I was young and he was counseling

  me, he came so close to what I was thinking I felt he was

  reading my thoughts. I suppose that was why I was so impressed

  by what he said and always listened when he spoke.

  (Maybe it was also impressive because he never spoke unless he had

  something to say.)

  * * *

  After the birth of his seventh child, he said, "I used to give

  out cigars, but I've reached the point now where the other

  fellow ought to give me one!”

  * * *

  Jerome hadn't realized he had a sense of humor about his family's size.

  Of his children, he often said, "Some people have money;

  I have rune children. I’m rich."

  * * *

  He loved the farm and he also liked carpenter work.

  Of the farm, he said, "This is the best place on earth to raise

  a family." A favorite expression of his concerning carpentry

  was, "There are tricks to every trade, but carpentry is all tricks."

  He also said, "You aren't a real carpenter until you can cover your

  mistakes with trim."

  * * *

  You have to go back now 30 or 40 years, to harvest time

  when the threshing was being done. Farmers would haul their

  grain into the elevators in horse-drawn wagons. Some of the

  wagons were of wood and some were heavy galvanized tin. You

  can imagine the noise that came over the prairie when these

  returned over the rough roads empty. They were especially noisy

  in the evening time. Although he was charitable, if someone

  came to the house and talked a great deal of nonsense, he'd

  be prompted to say when they left, "An empty wagon makes the

  most noise."

  * * *

  There was a long paragraph about the swimming pool, but it was so played down, as though not to offend, that its point was lost, and, anyway, a slash had been drawn through it. He went over and found the percolator empty, and began pacing to let his father know he was finished-Martin was in the doorway. "Well?" he said.

  "I like it all."

  His father came to the table and tapped the papers together. "All? This isn't even a fraction of it. As I was putting this bit down, just trying to get organized, so many other scenes and events came to me, I realized I could write a book about that man." He stared beyond Jerome as if studying the imagined book, its heft and shape and size and color, with all the stories he'd told over the years compressed within its covers, its weight in the world, and where it would fit on the shelf above his desk, and then said, "And someday, I might. Now, though, I don't know if I'll be able to use any of this."

  "What do you mean? What's the problem?"

  "Oh, I don't know. It's all so personal. 'I'm not sure what Dad would think of it. He was a very sensitive man, as you know."

  Jerome closed his mouth on what felt like an incoherent howl.

  *

  In the morning, at seven-thirty, he went to Mass with his father and Laura while the rest of the family slept in. The church was a mission, and Masses were said at seven-thirty one week and ten the next, alternately (on the early weeks many parishioners went to a Mass in Havana or Pekin, rather than get up so early), and was at the north edge of town, along the highway, across from a place called Mark's Superette, and resembled a wayside chapel, or modest-sized granary, except for its double entry doors of oak and a wooden cross in the gable Tom had installed. The yard around it was enclosed by a wall of stone-faced cement blocks a few feet high, with a flat finished cap crowning it, where everybody sat and gossiped after church, and in the lot to the right, bordered by an identical wall, was Mrs. Strawrick's house. It looked deserted now.

  Into the vestibule, not much larger than a closet, where the holy water lay frozen all winter in a metal font attached to the inner doors with a wood screw. Three or four dozen people in the pews, many of them relatives; Jay and his wife and daughters, Fred and Fred Jr., Vince with his family, Tom and two of his boys, Elaine with Tommy and Carl. Jerome had forgotten the kneelers weren't padded. He stood for the opening of the Mass and realized, as if he'd risen up into it, that he had a headache.

  He knelt. Drowsy and enervated from his late-night hours, he let the Mass enwrap him in its chrysalis of familiarity, and felt his fever increase and genitals lift with a gentle erection; the libidinous taint of these early-morning Masses, the mingling of waking dreams with the antiquated Latin, the somnambulistic movements of kneeling and sitting and standing, known by rote, the hand bells ringing at the altar like a distant recollection borne on the wind of the faith of childhood, candle flames dimming his conscience, a feeling of catharsis for the unkindnesses of the previous week, and a marshaling of faith to move with more kindness, if he could, down the corridor of the next. Oh, chapel of light, the stuttering rays down my eye, the lid opening on a red-filmed scene, the slow procession there, then the light rising up, rays of it, along the immovable stare, the mask of it, immaculate eye, master of— Sexual love as kneeling at a shelter, her rose ass spout nectar for a good kissing job.

  He started from half sleep. At many of these early Masses there weren't any altar boys, and his grandfather would go to the communion rail and give the Latin responses, retained from boyhood, to the priest; the cold Sunday nights of Lent when the church wasn't heated; Stations of the Cross and then Benediction, the air suffused with incense, myrrh, purplish smells, Jerome or Charles swinging the thurible on its chains, hearing the congregation that never sang the rest of the year self-consciously start the songs of Benediction, and then hearing his grandfather, whose quartet was reputed to have such good harmony they made dishes vibrate on shelves, suddenly release his voice as if it were a bird he was releasing, and letting it soar over the others and lift them up with it, making it seem a single voice was singing in many tones, until the small building reverberated and began to detach itself from its foundation and glide through the last of the spring snows toward summer—or so it felt; Jerome's only intimation of heaven—especially on the final hymn, "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name," when it became clear that his grandfather's only means of expressing emotion was in song.

  Everybody stood for the gospel, and then sat again for the sermon, if there was to be one; the priest was Father Hart-Donovan, a white-haired, ruddy outdoorsman, whose specialty was a fifteen-minute Mass. He drove a fast car that a gray Weimaraner always rode in, along with shotguns and shells, and if it was hunting season, he'd step up to the communion rail and say, "Because of our tardiness today, we will dispense with the sermon." A stock phrase, unlike his usual straightforward talk, and then he'd swing back to the altar and rattle through the Latin so rapidly you weren't ever sure whether he said it all or not. He'd gone pheasant hunting to Dakota a few times with Jay and Fred, and they claimed that once they got beyond the border of the state he put his rabat and collar at the bottom of a suitcase filled with clothes from a company called L. L. Bean, and said, "From now on, I'm Tim O'Brian to you guys, and if either of you calls me Father, or lets on I'm a priest, I'll quit hearing your confessions." And yet all he did, they said, was hunt so hard he wore them out, and was once delighted for days when the daughter of the rural couple they boarded with
walked onto the porch one night and saw him with his back to her, and said, "Oh, excuse me, Mr. O'Brian," realizing he was taking an outdoors leak.

  Today, though it must have been hunting season, he gave a sermon on daily devotion, which he said was not the sort of devotion that reminded him of a horse wearing blinders, but open-minded and questioning, so that one could see new meaning in the Scriptures, in the many mysteries of the Church that nobody seemed to find mysterious any more, now that there'd been some progress in how we lived, and in the everyday changes that took place in nature. Then each day you'd grow, he said, not only as a person, which would also happen, but closer to the Center of Peace of the Universe. He tipped his black-rimmed glasses upward as if to indicate.

  Jerome's headache was gone. Father fiddled with the tacks that held the linen to the communion rail, a habit of his, and said, "As you know, we've lost C.J.C. He was a good man, a kind man, and thought so much about his faith you'd think he'd wear it thin, yet became more devout. He was an inspiration to us all with his daily devotion and who he was. Think what a blow it must be to the family to lose him. Offer some prayers this week to them, especially his widow, Marie. There'll be a Requiem for him tomorrow at ten, and the Rosary will be prayed tonight in the funeral home. Now let's say five Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys for the repose of his soul."

  *

  Jerome walked with Charles through ankle-deep leaves under the overarching elms around the old Opera House, dreading Crowley's, the wide-porched, well-kept, white-frame funeral parlor, and grateful that he'd been in it only once, to view his mother, when they passed an outdoor fireplace of brick that had a cornerstone with names and dates scratched into it, and felt a tug of undertow at his memory.

  "That's sure lasted," he said.

  "Uh-huh." Charles's hands were in his pockets and he seemed to be looking in every direction except where he intended to go.