by Kyp Harness
Because it comes down to that, you either take it or you don’t, and the choice you’re given is no choice at all and you can cry but crying passes, knowing you’ll cry again but that’ll pass too, dash the dishes to the floor but they’ll just have to be cleaned up after; thank God for all the things that must be done but how killing they are somehow, till one day you get all cried out I suppose, you see them like that, the old fat ones like Bess Armstrong sitting there doing crossword puzzles in the Sunday paper or playing bingo, their big fat arms on the table and staring down all tired and determined and expecting to win as if someone owes it to them, letting themselves go with their dusty grey hair, sitting together in the Golden Grill getting the lunch special after shopping, raking over the ruins of someone else’s wrecked life, all hard and grey and cried out and merciless, especially the ones in church, their wrinkled bitter pursed lips—Oh why the hell can’t he just call—why the hell, what the hell’s the matter with him, why’s he have to be so goddamned selfish?
The younger son nudges the older son, tilts his head towards his brother and looks at him questioningly. The older son shushes his younger brother, bidding him silently to eat his meal without further ado.
Oh and I suppose if you’d wanted Bert Walmsley you could’ve had him—Bert not particularly good-looking but not a bad-looking man being tall, thin, well-built though, the kind you were supposed to want, easygoing, used to pick me up in his father’s truck, go to the 4-H dance and what not, went to the same church, a NICE man, or boy rather, married now, runs his own business, not particularly exciting but NICE, nice but not like it was with Buzz the first night, when Buzz came to the door the first night with his black hair and the devil in his eyes, the bright glittering of him, not conventionally good-looking either but he stood there like a fact, like the floor wanted him to be there, you could have felt him there even if you were blind (where Bert could come in or leave the room and you might not know it), no mistaking it, and those big brown eyes twinkling made Bert Walmsley seem less real, like some lower race of man, no not really, but Bert you could stand in front of and know all he was or ever would be in fifteen minutes—he’d tell you as much himself, like a good horse or a pole you’d hitch your horse up to, like a chair you’d sit on and never really notice until it broke, which it never would—but Buzz, there was the devil in his eyes, and pain too, and a cockiness in them and in the swift movements of his shoulders and arms, their slicing movements when he walked, his bright, white teeth when he smiled and the funniness of him, laughing at everybody, the sharpness and smartness like nothing I’d ever known.
Bert and all the rest of them were just like ghosts, a sharpness you could cut yourself on too, believe me I knew, and it wasn’t the first night but shortly after, soon enough, and it was I who wanted it, and it seemed at the time it was all I’d ever wanted, or imagined I wanted or wanted without knowing it, all I could ever want or ever would want, right there before me and within me, the hardness and the softnesses of him, the what-the-hell way of him, the danger, and from that moment on there was no choice, or rather there was a choice but my wanting undid it, went past it and left it behind, as it left Bert Walmsley behind, unthinkable, there was only him, Buzz, or rather us, like a river narrowing into the fierce reality of what must be, it was necessary and unavoidable, and I knew it and he knew it and knows it still, knows it while he’s out there getting drunk and yelling in an argument with somebody, and Dad was none too happy about it either, maybe he knew it too, maybe he saw ahead to see me here eating supper with the kids alone… no, Dad could feel the danger off Buzz and he didn’t like it, no matter what Buzz did, though you can’t say Buzz ever went that much out of his way to get anyone to like him, but for Dad, old grouch that he was sometimes, a boy like Bert Walmsley was more his style, even went to the same church, he couldn’t see any good reason why I should give up a nice boy like Bert Walmsley, a nice safe polite one like that for some wild, sharp, smart aleck like Buzz, of course it only makes sense, old Dad out on the farm only wanted what was best, another honest, responsible, hard-worker; must’ve seen he was powerless to alter what was going on as anyone would’ve been powerless, even refused to give me away at the wedding till Buzz went out and talked to him, “Now look, we’re gettin’ married—you can be there if you want to or not, makes no difference to me, but she wants you to be there, and it’ll hurt her a hell of a lot if you’re not there and I’d like you to be there too, now, it’s up to you,” so he came and gave me away, going up the aisle like he was going to his own funeral, and crying afterwards, the old grouch, crying for himself and losing me, I imagine, but also for me, maybe, and the pain I’d come to, the pain he knew he couldn’t protect me from.
It’s a sure bet Bert Walmsley would never’ve caused me much pain, and he knew that too, and would it’ve mattered if I’d known the amount of pain or not? Though I’ve said many times to myself and to him, to Maxine too, if I’d known, I never would’ve, of course other times I’d never say or think that, and of course there’s so many things that if you knew in the first place, beforehand, what they’d come to and entail, you’d never do them, never do practically anything I guess if you knew, even be born I suppose, if you had choice in the matter.
“Way to go!” says the younger brother as the older brother’s glass of milk tips splashing and spreading a white, flowing pool across the tablecloth. The boy gets up, brings over a towel.
“Don’t use that,” she says. “Get the washcloth.”
“Why don’t you give him heck, Ma?” asks the younger boy.
“It was an accident,” she says, looking at the elder brother sop up the milk, and then again there’s always the kids and the dark, sparkling in his eyes and when we went up north that summer and camped, the rented motorboat and swimming in the lake, him so happy that day and laughing for no reason, little moments like that, and the first years after we married, a different man then, maybe I was different too, never had to wonder where he was or when he’d be home, or think how to speak or act or if to speak at all; sure we fought but not with that long-held bitterness that doesn’t fade or dissipate but rather builds with every fight, till every fight is the same fight and then there’s no fighting at all, or rather it’s just one long silent fight, a continuing condition like a piece of furniture: always there, never totally hidden and never totally revealed, always there even in the good times.
You tread around it lightly like a sore tooth, like a sour key on the piano, always just waiting to be hit, so you can’t move or speak or act quite so thoughtless and free ever again, and yes there was drinking, but not like now; it was because he liked it, where now he needs it, with an angry, sad, broken-down need, a bitter and desperate one, so deep it can’t be questioned or even spoken of aloud, like a great wound somewhere in him that pulses always now and can’t be stilled, only blurred, shrouded, covered up, glazed over so you only see the outline and proportion, not the real particularities and the true depth of it, and sometimes you see him lying there on the couch watching television with no expression on his face, and you know he’s not seeing what’s on the screen or thinking about it anymore than you are, sometimes you see him drunk and yelling hoarsely about something, his eyes all bleary and furious, the air around him white-hot with the anger coming off him in waves, or sitting there slowly passing out, not even able to keep his head from listing over to the side, his jaw hanging open, and you want to ask him why, even when things are good, we’re both moving around the kitchen doing something like canning tomatoes, sometimes especially then, you want to go and look into his eyes and say to him, just why, just that, even through your fear, and what you fear of course is that there is no answer, or rather and more so, that the answer is the one you already know, the one he knows you know and that you know he knows, and that the silence of all these years is composed of, that knowing and the fear brought on by it, of speaking and saying it aloud, for to say it would really be to stop time so
mehow—you looking into him and him looking into you in a frozen moment sliced out of your life with a quick, clean blade.
You fear that and the unimaginable difference it’d make, and even more than that you fear it would make no difference, none at all, that it’s too late for differences, everything would just turn and settle, and nothing, nothing would happen: the alarm clock would still ring the next morning, the real horror of that, and so you don’t ask why, you turn back to what must be done, and after a while the impulse to ask lessens and fades, not so much that you can forget it ever happened or so that it won’t come back again, no, but after a while it lessens and fades and you can think, Well, this is bearable, or What did you expect, anyway?—and of course some do have it worse, after all.
Because you can only know what you’ve known, not that nothing else exists; in fact, something in you can’t stop imagining it, but then that’s part of what you know already anyhow, part of what makes it not bearable, but makes you think it is for a while, that is, most of the time, until…
She’s moving from the table to the counter with the dishes, the kids clambering from their chairs. “Bed soon,” she says.
“Aw!” they respond with the familiar scornful grumbling, chasing each other out of the room.
Until what? Until imagining does not satisfy anymore; the hole’s too big to cover it with, so you try something else and get thrown back to it again, all the while knowing that’ll be the case, so you stare across the coffee in the morning, drive to work, smile, don’t smile, bend, don’t bend, feeling there’s something else, pretending there isn’t, trying to believe things are as they are because they could not be otherwise, for after all you did not, could not, want Bert Walmsley—and because in the end, anyway, what’s the point?
An Awful Thing
The night the old man died and his soul loosened itself from its inner confines as he sat in his easy chair and went dropping from this world like a nickel through a hole in your pocket, down into the deep, dark depths from which no one ever returns, sending a widening wave of concentric ripples through the land of the living, the telephones rang one by one in quiet households and the little yellow lamps on the night tables flicked on one by one across the county in order of kin and acquaintance. The night the old man died, raw and husky thighs started and straightened up out of their warm, cuddly blankets, sleeping arms shaken awake clutched the phones quick to the jaw, and the interrupted dreamers cried, “Aw, shit!” “What is it, Buzz?” “Aw, Elmer’s dead!” “No!”
Sudden scrambling in beds everywhere as the shock, like a cool blast of electricity through their minds, rigidified them, stopping their hearts and breaths and flashing in the murky realm between their grief and disbelief, each wanting to know that they were still asleep and still dreamed but realizing this was not so. They looked over, the clock still ticked, their eyes settled on a rumpled shirt lying on the floor as real and still as death.
The night the old man died was a warm Indian summer night, the wind like an even breath through the trees. Stoplights still changed, cars and trucks still sped by on the highways, radios played, and cars even motored by on the road past his house, unaware that the old man in his easy chair leaned back, sighed, and in the next moment, lived no more. The night the old man died, he’d eaten his supper with his wife, then settled down in front of the TV. At about ten o’clock he got up to take a piss, then his wife heard him opening the front door, closing it and coming back.
“What were you doing, Elmer?” asked his wife from the couch.
Elmer said he thought he’d heard something out there then he sat back down in his easy chair and after a while—hard to say when—Elmer never heard and never saw anything ever again.
The night the old man died, his wife awoke and stood at his side shaking him and crying his name with increasing fear and pleading; a woman called out all alone in an empty house with a dead man, surrounded by all the objects and mementoes and collected reminders of a life gone by, her voice going more hollow with every call, settling into the resignation of one who cries with no expectation of being heard. The faces smiled down from their picture frames, the abandoned shoes sat unlaced on the carpet, and the shirts hung waiting like obedient soldiers in the musty, upstairs closet forever the night the old man died.
“Well now, Uncle Elmer knows something we all don’t know,” said the little smart kid from the back seat as they drove through the bright country morning.
Mona drives silently and snuffles into a torn, soggy Kleenex periodically; she’s wearing her sunglasses and as she winces in her sadness, she almost seems from the side to be smiling since the corresponding expressions of her eyes are obscured. Buzz is quiet and sober, his eyes blinking like an angry hawk’s beneath his creased and jerking forehead, his mouth a straight line of solemnity. They turn and park the car in place in the procession on the leafy street, all smelling like toothpaste and shampoo and the brisk, pungent aftershave still cool and stinging on Buzz’s cheeks and throat.
Checking the rearview mirror one last time to make sure every hair is in place, they climb out of the car, Mona reaching up and picking a piece of white thread from the shoulder of Buzz’s jacket, and they join the other people in clusters as they make their way up the sidewalk towards the church. They all exchange grim nods and even sometimes tight and drawn smiles; everybody’s a bit stiff in black and grey suits and dresses freshly ironed that morning. It’s a cloaked and cloistered thing: large and bulging men who haven’t worn a suit for years seem fit and ready to burst out of their collars and neckties at a moment’s notice; willowy, reedy women in black dresses clutching black purses to their abdomens, wearing large eyeglasses and their hair sprayed into place so that the sunshine bounces off of it; little black and grey knots of people advancing across the green lawn to the church beneath the bright, morning sky from which the sun seems to be shining sympathetically down.
A couple of children halt their playing in the yard across the street and watch, then after a moment return to skipping rope as the people linger self-consciously before the doors of the church, exchanging meaningless pleasantries. Everybody’s a bit hesitant to step into the church—husbands who haven’t touched their wives in months now place a hand protectively on their backs and then with bowed heads, as if making a pilgrimage into some unknown foreign land, step up the stairs into the dark, oak vestibule of the church where a tall, lugubrious friend of the family stands in his suit greeting everybody, a dull foolish grin on his face, hair creeping from beneath the cuffs of his immaculate jacket, and all the men’s aftershave mingles with the sound of the faint, rolling, organ music playing a wandering, waning refrain murmuring beneath the careful whispers of the bereaved, mixing with the dark shadowy smell of the thick, burnished wood and the bright, tickling smell of the white tissue-paper bibles and hymnals, the thin, white, eggshell wafers of communion like the soft, white, soapy smell of the hands of ministers, no dirt beneath the nails, no hair on the back, the lukewarm, almost-liquid meek pressure of the smooth, boneless fingers as they shake your hand—and another smell down beneath, something faint and strange and disquieting.
The organ music swells and rolls and whispers like a faraway ocean with no end and no beginning, like a faint yet insistent song, seeming at times to fade and plunge and die, then returning determinedly once again. People are passing down a long line, at the end of which an open casket sits propped up on a bier. Uncle Elmer’s wife Maxine stands beside the casket, her hand resting on the edge of it. From a distance, you can see part of Uncle Elmer’s solemn profile, part of his eye and his sunken cheek, his nose pointing straight up. People advance slowly to the casket to pay their respects, staring down at Elmer as his wife weeps and collapses against them.
Elmer just lies there, his hands folded across his chest as if he’s just settled down for a moment’s nap, the hands all white, the veins along the backs of them dull and hardened, his face asleep, expr
essionless, the flesh all flat and hanging down from each side of his head, his eyelids slapped shut, not so much seeming serene as insanely complacent, his nose jutting up like a sculpture of itself and his lips dry, his mouth a simple fold of skin, the colouring of his face bizarre, too real to be real, all drained out with artificial shadings and highlights, trussed up in collar and tie like somebody else’s idea of him, his head shrunken, small, diminished and weirdly feeble, sunk and positioned for display in the shining, billowing folds of bright, blue silk.
“I heard him get up and go out to the front door,” Maxine is saying. “I said, ‘Elmer, what’re you doing?’ ‘I thought there was someone out there,’ he says.”
Her voice comes out in small, whispery catches and sobs, her eyes all washed out and faded grey with the hours of crying, the rims around them swollen raw and red and glistening, her cheeks glimmering with the tears trickling down. She’s been hit by the white blast of death in a full-force, blinding blow. She looks from her comforters down to Elmer and back again with a sorrowful lethargy, reaching across at times to adjust his tie or to fuss with his collar—old habits die hard—moving slowly and foggily with a dazed, suffering numbness which every so often is agitated into a frenzy of stunned and shocked disbelief. She grasps at the hands and the arms and the lapels of the living with a sudden, insatiable need and low, moaning sobs burst from her in a flood.
Uncle Elmer just lies there, expressionless, indifferent, and sometimes it seems that from time to time, if inspected closely, his chest beneath his white shirt rises and falls in an infinitesimal rhythm of breathing, like an optical illusion, the folds of the shirt beneath his tie seeming to tighten slightly and relax. But no—stone cold he is, and stone still, no breath in death, and even a fly comes and lands on his forehead, crawls investigatively on its tiny, spidery legs upon the almost-translucent, waxy skin of his temple, up across his brow and down to the bridge of his nose. It flits away suddenly then lands aimlessly on Elmer’s cuff and gaining courage, traverses the back of his hand; it pauses on the ridge of his knuckles to rub its front feet together furtively for a moment, then buzzes mercifully away—there’ll be time enough later.