who don’t know nothing but factory work, and I don’t want to be a bad husband to you. But every time I get up in the morning, every time I haul my fat ass out of bed, I think about them old guys. I can’t help it. Because they might not be down on that corner anymore, but I know -as sure as I know that a man’s hands weren’t meant to be as scarred and calloused as mine are-I know that them old guys and that dog are still out there somewhere, and they’re still sad and lonely and miserable and people still make fun of them and one day that’s gonna be me, if it ain’t already. An old, drunk joke of a factory worker that’ll be forgot about an hour after he’s dead. I know this. And when I die, that old hound dog’s gonna show up on that corner again and sit there waiting for me. I’ll sit there on them steps with it and wait for it to drag over the ghosts of other guys who bungled everything and-what the hell am I going on about? Listen to me, will you?
“Oh, Christ, honey, I’m so sorry. It’s just I think about them guys and they way they were and I get so… scared.”
Mom went to him now, kneeling beside him and taking him in her arms. “It’s all right, honey, shhhh. There, there. It’s all right.”
“I love you. I don’t much act like it most of the time, but I do.”
“I know, shhh, c’mon.”
Still, he wept, pressing his face into her shoulder. “I wish I’d given both of you a better life, that’s all.”
“You’ve given us a good life, and that’s enough.”
I couldn’t watch any longer; I was an intruder, a spy, a voyeur, so I turned and left them there, a silhouette against a closed window, two people I now knew I’d never really known at all, a tableau frozen in the shadows: husband and wife.
God, how I wished that Beth and I would someday love each other like that.
I wasn’t surprised to find myself crying as I got back into bed. I’d found out more about my parents in those few minutes than I would have ever found out if it’d been left up to me. What did their memories mean, anyway? Who cared about their hopes? I was young and had better things to busy myself with.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of myself right then. I had never stopped to think that maybe it was important to them to share things like this with me, so that I might keep some small part of them alive after they were gone. Here is one of my best moments, would you keep it safe for me? Here is the dumbest thing I ever did, remember it for me, please? This was your great-grandmother, try to keep her in your thoughts.
It suddenly occurred to me that Mom hadn’t told Dad that I loved him, too. Had she been too caught up in comforting him to remember? Did it just slip her mind or – or was she as uncertain about it as Dad seemed to be?
There was such stillness in that room, and it found its way into the center of my chest, whispering of a man’s anger at seeing himself as being less than he really was; of a woman’s need to give comfort even if it meant making herself vulnerable to that anger; of a young man’s (really still a child in many ways) need to understand why he’d never seen them as being anything other than keepers and providers; and, most of all, in the stillness of the center, there in that house with its chronic angers, in that room, a final whisper from some dimly remembered poem about love’s austere and lonely offices.
I told myself that I would find a way, a right time, a good moment to let him know that, yeah, I thought he acted like a son-of-a-bitch sometimes, but that I understood why a little better now, and that I loved him. Loved them both.
I drifted off to sleep to find myself on a downtown corner, and here was an old hound dog waddling up to meet me. I looked around to see if I could spot the little boy who would grow up to be my dad. I wanted to say hi, and to thank him.
Shortly after my nineteenth birthday, the Cedar Hill Healthcare Center fell into some financial difficulties-I never understood the specifics-and had to make some cutbacks in personnel. Luckily, Mabel wasn’t among those who were laid off, but the woman with whom she often carpooled was among those let go. As a result, I began taking her to and from work, which was no burden; for one thing, I liked Mabel very much; for another, on those nights when she worked both the units and cafeteria, it was easier to just stay over at the house with Beth (the CHHC was only a fifteen minute drive from Beth’s house, thirty from mine). Any excuse Beth and I could find to be alone (excepting for the Its, who soon learned that once that bedroom door was closed, it wasn’t opening again anytime soon) was welcomed.
No, we weren’t a couple-not publicly, anyway. Beth still went through relationships like most people went through tissues during allergy season, but during the frequent “breaks” in her love life, whenever we were alone, there was no such thing as “hands off.” Even then I suspected that it was all going to break my heart in a major way sometime in the future, but when you’re a teenager it’s a lot easier to convince yourself that you’re made of sterner stuff than you really are.
So I willingly became Beth’s “fuck-buddy.”
It wasn’t just the sex-though I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that was a factor-it was the companionship. I don’t know if that’s something a lot of people under thirty ever really grasp-it doesn’t have to be the naked, sweating, rolling, groaning, shrieking do-me-do-me-do-me christ I’m-gonna- come routine all the time. Sometimes just sitting next to the person you love and watching a movie on television while their fingers brush lightly over the back of your hand is infinitely more satisfying, simply because they get you; they know that this twitch means one thing and that little shiver something else; they can tell by the way you clear your throat that you’re about to laugh, or that when you stretch your neck to the left and no bones crack it means you’re anxious about something: companionship.
Beth was splendid company. Even after she disappeared, the memory of those nights of doing nothing- watching television, listening to records, sorting through grocery store coupons, clipping one of the Its’ toenails- made me smile.
And to a large extent, I have Mabel to thank for that-if I hadn’t been the one driving her to and from work, I never would have truly understood that sometimes tenderness marks you far deeper than passion can ever dream.
Usually I’d get to the nursing home a few minutes before Mabel’s shift ended and would wait in the cafeteria area, or chat with whomever was working the station while Mabel made her last rounds on the unit. The people there began to recognize me after a while, and by the time I turned twenty my presence there at the end of Mabel’s shift was something of an evening staple; if I were even five minutes late, both eyebrows and questions would be raised: You don’t suppose he forgot, do you? It’s just not like him to be late, is it? Doesn’t seem right, not having him around at this hour, huh?
Because I always used the same entrance and took the same route to Mabel’s unit, I always passed the same doors. Most nights these stood open (a closed door, I came to find out, meant only one of two things: fast asleep, or dead and waiting for the funeral home to pick up the body) and I came to have “on-sight” relationships with some of the residents. You know the kind: pass the same person at roughly the same time often enough over the course of a day or a week or month and you both become something of a fixture in the other’s life, even if you never speak or learn his name. Nine-fifteen, time for Mr. Pickup to saunter by my door. I wonder if he’s going to wear the leather jacket tonight or that gray windbreaker. Let’s see, where is he? Ah, here he comes. Hmm. The windbreaker tonight. Good choice. Seems like he’s in a good mood-maybe he got some earlier. Looks like a nice young man, though. Time to wave to him.
The flip side to this was Mr. Pickup unintentionally made himself an expected part of the Door People’s routine; the woman in 106 who blared Later with Tom Snyder from her television set just couldn’t enjoy the second half of her program unless I stopped to hear her comment on how awful it was that they had to have so many gosh-darned commercials on these days; the two sisters in room 112 just had to know how the weather was tonight, and had I heard anything about tomorrow’s forecast?; the silver-haired guy whose wheelchair was always parked near the vending machines would not-repeat, not -pop open his evening soda until I passed by so he could lift the can in my direction and say “ Salute, my boy! ”; and the two old farts in 120-who for some reason called me “Captain Spaulding”-could have their evening ruined unless we ran through the same shtick:
Old Fart #1: Here comes Captain Spaulding!
Old Fart #2: The African explorer?
Me: Did someone call me “Shnorer?”
Them: We weren’t talking to you!
Followed by uproarious laughter from them.
(Hey, I never said it was a clever shtick.)
