Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  I turn and crab my way out, knocking my crown askew on an unseen strut. Gray has a hand out to help me, and when I grip it and rise to full height beside him, he unexpectedly hugs me. Manfully of course, clapping his hands on my shoulder blades, not really squeezing at all. But it's still the first embrace that's ever passed between us, and I'm just as unexpectedly moved. It's over before I can properly hug him back, but he lets an arm rest on my shoulder as we head through the dark to the office. Behind us I can hear a veritable symphony of barking. Impossible to distinguish what's man, what's dog.

  As we enter the office Mona's crouched behind the desk, rummaging in the tiny Pullman refrigerator. "We don't exactly have champagne," she grumbles half to herself, as she pulls out old containers of cottage cheese and yogurt bubbling with mold inside. Then out comes a bottle of Miller Lite, and she stands triumphant. Gray points me into the swivel chair, then turns to close the door. Mona has scrounged three plastic champagne flutes from yet another groaning file drawer. She blows the dust out of each, sets them side by side on the desk, and starts pouring the beer.

  "Mona," I say, "sweetheart—a dog act?"

  She shrugs, unfazed. "It's supposedly an AIDS piece," she replies dryly. "I don't prescreen 'em. Maybe the dog's got AIDS." She hands me a flute of beer, mostly foam, then one to Gray. She lifts hers and gives me a look brimming with camaraderie. "To the Second Coming."

  We grin all around, reach and click our flutes together like musketeers, then take a swallow. "For a second there," I say, "I thought Mr. Onward Christian Soldier was gonna deck me."

  Mona clucks. "I felt sorry for the girl. She was supposed to perform."

  "They probably thought they were coming to 'Star Search.'"

  "Please. That whole group"—she tosses her head at the theater—"is just what the cat dragged in. Next time we'll get you a clever audience, and maybe a little press even." Her eyes widen behind her glasses, dazzled with possibilities.

  "Oh no," I protest for the second time today, "there won't be any next time."

  And with that the exhaustion finally hits me. My muscles go weak and rubbery. In the middle distance I see white spots, like there's not enough oxygen going to the brain. The weariness is so profound that the gig I just did seems like a fantasy. I'm a dying man again, who's been losing ground by inches for eighteen months. That can't have been me out there.

  Gray, who hasn't spoken but never stops watching, crouches beside the swivel chair and lightly taps my knee. "Time to get you home," he says, infinitely solicitous.

  I'm so relieved to have someone take charge. I nod, handing over my glass of beer. Careful not to prick myself, I take the crown from my head and pass it to Mona, who swaths it with tissue again. When I stand, all I have to do is lift my arms, and Gray pulls the caftan over my head, first swiping off the wig. I feel like a little kid being undressed, and the feeling is unutterably delicious. My dad never took my clothes off except to whip my butt, and my sainted mother could barely stand to touch us once we were out of the crib, I think because we were boys and constituted for her an obscure occasion of sin. I prop a foot on the chair, and Gray swiftly undoes my sandal.

  "You know you were fabulous," says Mona.

  "Too slow, no focus," I retort automatically. "No energy at the end." I lift my other foot to be unshod and announce to Gray, "I think you're supposed to wash my feet with your hair."

  "No, the brother stuff was great," Mona insists, lighting a Merit. "It's the first time I ever thought of Miss J as somebody with a past. Before it's always been like this outrageous Bible cartoon. The greatest cartoon," she hastens to add, skirting all left-handed compliments, "but you know what I mean? You could do a whole incest thing."

  "Yeah, really," I say, stepping into my jeans as Gray holds them out, the perfect dresser. "Maybe Brian'll come do a guest spot sometime, and we can have it out once and for all. He could hammer the nails in." I shrug on my sweat shirt again, take a step to Mona's side, and bend and kiss her nose. "Sorry, girl, I've scratched this itch. Ask me again in a year and a half, or leave a rose on my grave, whichever is more appropriate. We're outa here."

  No protest. She smooths my brow with the flat of her hand, and it feels so cool I think I must have a fever. Gray opens the door, and we slip out all three into the dark. We scuttle silently across to the main entrance, and I only look back once toward the stage, in truth with a kind of thrill at what I've brought off.

  The man with the dog has put on a pair of black glasses, and he grips a sight-dog harness attached to the animal. He's declaiming something very profound, you can tell by the rich stentorian tone in his voice, like high school Shakespeare. I block out the words. Mona creaks open the door, and Gray and I duck out, Mona giving my ass a pat as we go.

  Under the awning Gray and I are bathed in rosy neon, and though I'm half collapsing I want to dance. There's nothing like leaving a theater after doing a show you love. It doesn't even require a crowd of fans at the stage door. You feel like you own the night, the moon and stars into the bargain. Better even than walking home after a night of love. I trot ahead of Gray into the parking square, stopping under the stand of palms and turning in a kind of pirouette. I fling up my arms and strike a heroic pose, like Isadora in the Parthenon.

  "Felt pretty good, huh?" Gray asks with a grin, slouching with folded arms against the back of his pickup.

  "What can I say, I'm such a star." I stroll over to where he stands and shadowbox him. He watches me bemusedly. Then I let my arms go limp and loll my tongue out, dumb with fatigue.

  "Get in," he orders me brusquely, knowing when I've played enough, then heads around to the driver's side. I shuffle over to the passenger's door, and I'm just about to get in when a figure steps out of the shadows by the loading dock. Instinctively I throw up an arm, as if I'm about to be attacked.

  It's a woman. Stocky, mid-forties, jeans and a T-shirt. For a second I think she's homeless and wants a handout. Then she speaks: "Mr. Shaheen?" I nod. "I just wanted to tell you—I'm an ex-nun—"

  Painfully shy. Oh God. Believe it or not I never want to hurt anybody's feelings. I know there're people out there like Mother Teresa, singing lullabyes to dying babies. They've got better things to do than be grossed out by me. I stand there as she hems and haws, bracing myself for a guilt trip.

  "I mean, that was really something." She looks at me with a kind of awe, then suddenly bursts out laughing. "I bet the Pope woke up in a cold sweat when you were on that cross."

  I feel giddy, as if I've gotten away with something very, very naughty. "Thanks."

  And now she's pumping my hand, hearty as a salesman. The shyness is gone. "You take care of yourself now. And you ever need any reinforcements, you call me." I realize she's slipped a card in my hand, even as she stands away and motions me into the truck. I climb in, smiling and waving. Gray rolls us into reverse, and my nun waves us away, calling out exuberantly: "Angels are all gay too!"

  I stare at the card as we pass beneath a streetlight. KATHLEEN TWOMEY. SALVA HOUSE WOMEN'S CENTER. With a street address in Venice. I smile across at Gray. "I believe I have just lit one candle."

  He's somewhere else. "You take your medication?"

  "Mm—I guess I'm a little late. Won't kill me."

  He leans a little harder on the gas as we retrace our way through Santa Monica. I swear, he's more alert to my schedule of meds than I am. I tilt my head back against the rear window, which rises right behind the seat. The truck's too old to have headrests, or even seat belts, one of a hundred violations Gray would be slapped with if he ever got stopped by the CHP. But I like the rattletrap feel of the truck, the musty smell of its cracked seat, the dash where nothing works except the two-watt panel light that makes the interior glow like a film noir set.

  "What would Brian say if he saw that?" Gray shakes his head in wondering delight, expecting no answer. "What would my father say, for that matter?" He gives out with a hooting two-note laugh, shivering with pleasure at the prospect of t
he old man turning over in his grave. There's a real streak of anarchy there. And I love being the goad.

  "Too bad I couldn't get AIDS in," I say, my eyes beginning to droop. I mean it: for all its goose of the bourgeoisie, Miss Jesus seems a little quaint to me now, not quite in the heart of the fire. Maybe I should've flashed my lesions after all.

  "You could," he retorts, but leaves it at that, not wanting like Mona to pressure me to do it again. We're back on the coast highway, heading out of Santa Monica. My head's wobbly. Gray taps the seat beside him. "Why don't you stretch out here."

  An excellent idea. I scrunch down and curl onto the seat, tucking my feet up under me. As I lay down my head I find it pillows just right on Gray's thigh. I try to pull back, not wanting to get in the way of his driving, but he says "That's fine," so I leave it there. As it is I can fall asleep on a dime these days, but here I don't quite go out like a light. Instead I'm in this half slumber, feeling the muscle play beneath my head as his foot rides lightly on the accelerator.

  I'm totally safe. At one point, just as I think I might get cold, he takes a hand from the wheel and lays his arm across my chest, and the chill is gone. We are bearing home with the beach on our left, the mountains on our right. Everything is in place. And I am still alive.

  THAT WHOLE NEXT WEEK WE WERE HIT WITH A WAVE OF storms out of the Gulf of Alaska, bitter driving rain and boiling seas hammering the bluffs. A mudslide down by Big Rock narrowed the coast road to one lane for three days straight, sending commuters into apoplexy. Two stilted houses at the foot of Tuna Canyon collapsed into the swirling tide, one of them owned by a starlet who gave sobbing refugee interviews to all the local affiliates. It would pour for five or six hours steady, sheets of it slapping the house in a mad rage. Then stop like a faucet turned off, and the black clouds would flex their muscles for the next onslaught, till the sky was like a vast mushroom cloud pregnant with nuclear doom. And then the rain again.

  It was fabulous. I was content to build great roaring fires every day, from the cords of cedar and eucalyptus stacked in the cloister outside the dining room. Then I'd bundle up in the afghan and read from the leatherbound sets of authors, dozing every ten pages or so. At this rate I wouldn't finish Emma till 1993, but hey, who was waiting for a book report from me? That first day, the Monday after Miss Jesus, Gray came tramping in in fireman's boots and a yellow slicker that swept to his ankles. He stood on the fieldstone hearth, dripping and rubbing the chill from his hands—no heater in the pickup either—and said with an imp's grin, "This is all your fault, you know." Then pointed up. "You pissed Her off."

  We laughed and had a cup of tea, and afterward he spent a couple of hours tinkering over the property, checking for leaks in the red-tile roof, lashing a couple of flapping shutters. He said he'd be back next day with groceries, and we set the lunch with Foo for the following Monday. I'd long since stopped protesting that he didn't have to keep me provisioned, but in fact I guess I'd gotten pretty spoiled by his almost daily attentions. For Tuesday came and nearly went, and I was scrunched on the sofa wondering if Emma would ever stop cock-teasing Mr. Knightly, when my heart leaped at the sound of the back door opening.

  I went to the kitchen and came face-to-face with a hulk of an Indian chief. Two-twenty-five and blue-black hair, weathered profile craggy as the buffalo nickel, wearing a Stetson and a buff suede jacket. I must have blanched, for he smiled apologetically and spoke with curious elegance for one who looked so adamantly untamed. "Mr. Baldwin sent me," he said, gesturing with the sack of groceries as he set them on the counter. "He's got the flu. He didn't want you catching anything."

  I thanked him. He was called Merle, some kind of overseer at the ranch—which, despite its having evolved into a conference center and think-tank institute, still had horses, and fences to mend. Thrown off balance, I sent him away with a hasty get-well to Gray. Only when I'd curled up on the sofa again and picked up Jane did I realize how disappointed I was that my patron and friend wouldn't be coming by. First time I wished the beach house had a phone.

  Still, I'm very good at being solo. I holed up cozily for the next three days, venturing out whenever the rain would take a breather, sloshing around my acreage. The ocean was too furious below for me to go down to the beach, and the beach stairs shuddered from the battering of the surf till it seemed they would tear away from the bluff. The goldfish pond was brimful, the overflow coursing away and digging channels in the lawn. But the water in the pond was icy clear, and the fish seemed to love it, flashing about in figure eights, bright as new-minted doubloons. Everything loved the rain, the sycamores and the beds of ivy, even a pelican flapping its wings in exultation out on the terrace.

  I didn't think much about Miss Jesus, never being the sort who hungered for reviews, but I did think now and then about Brian. I tried to remember when his birthday was—August?—and how I might send him a card. The address in Southport still lay scrawled on the pad by the stove. I wondered what he and Daniel did on Saturdays, if it was ever anything else but sports.

  And Thursday afternoon, when Merle showed up again, I couldn't wait for news of Gray. Feeling a good deal stronger, said the big man, who looked to be about forty-five. "He says to tell you lunch is on for Monday. He's just playin' it safe, with the germs and all." Again he had brought me food, which he unpacked out of the sack. Gray must've given him a list, for then he went outside and checked the drains and dragged the barrels out to the end of the drive for trash pickup.

  In the kitchen I tore off the sheet with Brian's address from the pad and scribbled a note. "Who is this warrior chieftain you send to me? I miss your plain and earthy WASPness, and he is no substitute. Mona and I will take care of the Foo occasion. You just get better. I thought I was the sick boy. Love, Miss J."

  I folded the paper and ran out just as Merle was climbing into the pickup. I handed it over, smiling, and he looked away as he took it, awkward and uncomfortable. I wondered if perhaps he couldn't read himself, or was I treating him too much like a servant? I could tell that Merle and I were destined to be out of phase, though he gave me a hearty wave as he drove away.

  Next morning I walked in the rain all the way to the Chevron station, garbed in an ancient voluminous slicker that had been hanging in the pantry since the days of Captain Ahab. Also a brute black umbrella with a six-foot span—the aunts did not go in for dainty things. The rain wasn't heavy, but the wind was brisk and buffeting, and I felt like the Morton's salt girl. Panting with exertion, I folded myself in the phone booth and dialed Mona's number in Westwood, reversing the charges. Which she accepted—a bit reluctantly, I thought.

  "Don't worry," I said in a wounded tone, "I'll pay you the fifty cents."

  "It's not you, Tommy," she sighed. "Daphne just left."

  Christ. Why is it one's friends never behave and never seem to learn? Daphne is Mona's ex—ex-torturer—a shrink by profession and beady-eyed, with a chip on her shoulder the size of a two-by-four. They've broken up ten different times, new girlfriends right and left, but something draws them back together to reenact their misery. I braced myself for the details, but Mona was too embarrassed or bored to go through it all again. She shook her self-absorption, inquired if I was surviving the typhoon, and I zeroed in on Monday's lunch.

  "Get a bunch of ridiculous salads at Irvine Ranch," I instructed. "Curried pesto, that kind of thing. And fruit and cheese for dessert."

  "Wait—what should I wear for this old lady? My Chanel suit?"

  "Darling, it's the beach. Funky-cazh."

  "And what if it rains?"

  "The rain will stop," I intoned with a gravel of authority, tough as John Huston. "You just get rid of that two-bit Jungian sociopath, you hear? Or else you'll be the old lady, wondering where it all went."

  She whimpered uncle. I've found that since my illness I can cut right to the chase with my friends, demanding that they jettison the bullshit from their lives. I am like the toller of the bell: my very presence seizes them with how little
time is left. Exacting a promise that Mona would be at the house on Monday by eleven, I ventured back into the rain again. This time heading into the wind, the umbrella held before me as a shield. Every footstep felt like lead. My command that the storm would end seemed laughable and puny.

  Then a red van pulled to the side of the road in front of me. A lift! I whumped ahead through a thirty-foot puddle and pulled the door and clambered in. The driver was one of those perfect surfers, Redford-blond and a Maui tan, even after a week of rain. His surfboard stuck through the seats between us, white with zaps of Day-Glo green. We chatted beachtalk as we rode the two miles up the road. He clearly loved the rain as much as I, and had seen a whole family of seals that morning, huddled under a lifeguard's platform.

  It was a less-than-nothing encounter, yet he put me in mind of Brian, this nameless boy in his twenties reeking of health. When we reached my driveway and I got out, he grinned out his window and said the storm would be over in forty-eight hours. "And then the waves'll be banzai!" he enthused with a mock salute, peeling off into the rain. Leaving me desolate, shocked by the storm of his beauty, trapped in the spotted frailty of my body. I stumbled down the muddy drive, shot through with an unconsolable grief for the man I had ceased to be.

  Oh, I got over it. Another night in front of the fire, dozing over Emma. A whole package of frozen waffles for breakfast. At two in the afternoon, bundled up in my afghan, Emma and Mr. Knightly finally took their fatal turn in the garden. "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more," he says to her with exquisite feeling. And I found myself swallowing a lump along with the last of the Lido cookies. Then I heard a rattle at the back door, and leaped up to go greet Merle.

  "She won't use a wheelchair," he said, unpacking still more food, "and she'll never get acrost that lawn with her cane, 'specially if it's this soggy. So I'll come down here with 'em and carry her into the house."