Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (44 page)

Mary shook Green awake and told him the van was on its way. What she said didn't register at first. He'd been dreaming about Jane sunbathing, about driving his '77 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, about his co-workers throwing him a retirement party, about Jane using a pocket mirror to apply lipstick. Green tried to roll over. He didn't want to go. He wanted to stay in bed where it was warm. She could have her affair. He wouldn't ask questions or accuse her of lying anymore. He'd ignore it and let her do whatever she wanted. He just wanted to go back to his dreams.

Mary pulled the blankets down to the bottom of the bed, exposing his skinny body and knobby knees. He was wearing boxer shorts and a tank top undershirt.

“I'm not messing around, Green. Let's go. Get up.”

He reached over for his pad of Post-it Notes on the nightstand
while Mary opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a handful of boxers and tossed them on the bed. “Where's your swimming suit?” she asked. Green wrote,
I love you
, but he wasn't sure if that was true. He wanted to love her. Or, rather, he wanted to be loved by her. He wanted it to be simple, but it wasn't simple. It was complicated. He peeled off the note and crumpled it up. He wrote another note and held it out to her.
Are you divorcing me?

“I told you. This is short term. A month, two at the most, then like I said, we'll move back to Vegas. I need to get some things figured out.” She'd explained all of this last night—stroke, doctors, staff, blah, blah, blah.

He didn't believe her. She was going to stick him in We Care and then blow out of town, leaving him to rot away with the zombies.

From the closet, she pulled out a suit, the maroon one, the one he wore the first time he visited the Brazen Bull, and laid it on the bed. She held up a flashy black cowboy shirt with pearl buttons and roses embroidered on each shoulder. “You wanna pack this?”

He shook his head yes.

“Lots of people go to assisted living facilities for a short period of time. The people are nice. Your roommate is deaf. Carol is nice. They have a pool and you like swimming. You can join that morning club Carol talked about—the morning swimmers or whatever it was called.”

This had to be a big, cosmic joke. This wasn't happening; it wasn't real. In a few minutes, he'd open his eyes and be back in Vegas, floating on a raft in the above-ground pool, holding a can of Budweiser, Jane sprawled out in a sun chair wearing ridiculously large sunglasses. He'd be Green Geneseo again, with an entire Saturday afternoon ahead of him, the mountains in the distance, the hideously blue sky above him, maybe some Chinese takeout on the agenda for dinner, the stereo speaker in the Airstream window blaring Billy Squier's “Lonely Is the Night.”

“Are you listening to me?” She was holding two suits, each on hangers. “Do you want to take both of these?”

Yes, he nodded. He was taking everything with him. No guy was going to move into his bungalow and start wearing his suits and start pretending to be him. He, Green, was him, the only Green, the only him, the only guy who could wear his suits.

“I don't think I've ever seen you wear this one.” Mary was now holding up a black pinstriped suit. “Sure you want to take it?”

Yes,
he wrote.
I want to take it.

 

In the weeks and months following her death, Chic settled into his new life without Diane. It wasn't a good life, not that his life with her had been the good life, but this was worse. He stopped combing his hair. He rarely showered. He didn't bother matching his socks. He wore threadbare v-neck t-shirts with stains under the armpits. Most nights, he would conk out on the couch while watching
The A- Team
or
Knight Rider
or some other action-oriented show he had little interest in, and wake up around midnight and head up to bed, where he would toss and turn, pulling at the sheets, rolling over on his right side, then his left, back to his right, his left, his right, onto his back, onto his stomach, his back again, until he would finally give up and open his eyes and stare at the ceiling, the same ceiling Diane had stared at while listening to
The Art of Living
. He thought about all the things he'd done wrong, and how he could have been a better husband, a better father, a better everything.

He rolled out of bed and went down to the kitchen for a glass of water. In the cabinet above the sink were nearly two dozen glasses, way too many for one man. He pulled open the silverware drawer. There were enough knives and forks and spoons for the goddamn Brady Bunch. In the living room, Diane's old issues of Dr. Peale's magazine,
Guideposts
were scattered about, on the coffee table, on the floor next to the couch. He went back upstairs and peeked into the nursery. The nightlight cast eerie shadows across the dolls' blank faces. They all wore the same expression: eyes wide and unblinking. He needed to get this stuff out of his sight, get it out of the house, get it out of his life.

He rented a storage space on the edge of town, out by the new soccer fields, and asked Russ and Ginger to come over the following Saturday. They started with the kitchen, wrapping the glasses and dishes in newspaper and carefully placing them in cardboard boxes, leaving behind two plates, two bowls, two glasses, and two settings of silverware. In the living room, they packed up the Airdyne bike, the couch, and the coffee table. In the bedroom, they emptied Diane's closet and her dresser drawers and pitched all of her makeup, except for the dry skin lotion. Chic told them he wanted to hold onto that. They took the clock radio from her side of the bed, the lamp, too. They loaded all of Dr. Peale books into cardboard boxes; Russ carried the issues of
Guideposts
to the garbage can outside next to the garage. Chic had made a list, and each time they finished a task, he crossed it off. In the nursery, they placed each doll in its own box, then took down the shelves where the dolls had sat for so many years. They also carried out the furniture—the crib, the changing table, the rocker, even the mobile that hung in the corner. When they were finished, the room was nothing more than an empty square with holes in the walls and indentations in the carpet where furniture had once rested.

Near the end of the day, Russ and Ginger came into the empty nursery to find Chic sitting on the floor with a green Middleville Junior High School duffel bag. He'd taken a box of keepsakes out of the closet and was rifling through it, stuffing pictures and memorabilia into the duffel bag. He was going to tell Russ about the lie. He'd been thinking about it all day, and he couldn't go on living it. It wasn't right.

“I think we got it all,” Russ said.

“Unless you want us to take that lamp in the living room,” Ginger added.

“All I want left in the house is a bed, the television, the dining room table with one chair, and my toothbrush.”

Ginger looked at Russ. “We can get the lamp on the way out.”

“You want us to take the duffel bag?” Russ asked.

“Duffel bag stays with me,” Chic said. “The box, though, can go.”

Ginger picked up the box. “You want to come with us? Take over the last load?”

“Actually, Russ, I want to talk to you about something.” Then he noticed Ginger standing behind him, her hand on his shoulder. They looked—what was the word?—complete, that was the word, complete. Russ was a good-looking boy. He had darkish skin, like his mother, and dark hair that was shiny and inky, like someone had colored it with Magic Marker. Ginger was a lovely woman, maybe a little tomboyish, but she made eye contact when she talked and seemed understanding and sympathetic. She was the type of person who'd share an umbrella with you in the rain. She wouldn't hog the covers. She'd be a good mother one day. She'd clip coupons. And Russ, he had good teeth. Chic did not have good ones, especially lately. His dentist wanted to pull a molar on his right side. Russ would do the things that were necessary to avoid bad teeth, like flossing. Russ was smart, too, or at least, he said smart things, like that tree stuff. Russ would prepare himself for a time like this, a time like Chic was experiencing—this loneliness. After he told Russ the truth about his mother, after Russ asked him why he did it, what finally made him do it after all of these years, Chic would tell him he was getting whipped by his loneliness. It was a beast, a killer. It had fangs and claws. He didn't want to be the only one hurting, so he told him, to hurt him. And he was sorry. But why do that? Why make him hurt like he was hurting.?There was no reason. Russ was young. He and Ginger had their lives spreading out in front of them, unfolding like a map. But, and here was the problem, their lives could go in two very different directions. Chic knew this . . . oh, did he know this. A life could bank and turn and end up in a grassy field full of wild flowers, the sun blazing down, the birds chirping overhead. Or a life could wash up on a beach after a storm, the waves crashing on the sand, the boat busted to hell. Maybe he should be like a lighthouse. Maybe that's why he
should tell him. Lay all the hell out for him. Give it to him straight. Warn him. That was the fatherly thing to do. But he wasn't his father. He and Russ weren't even related by blood. So, what gave him the right? Telling him the truth would be a big glass of saltwater, and what was it really going to do but make him upset? He didn't want to see him upset, so he simply stared at him and said nothing, resigned, again, to say nothing, this time forever.

“What? What do you want to talk to me about?”

“It's nothing. Forget it.”

“What, man? You can tell me. I'm not going to judge you.”

“Thank you. I just wanted to tell you thank you. For today. I appreciate it.”

“No problem, Dad.”

“Don't call me Dad, please. Buddy is your father.”

After they left, Chic went downstairs to the living room. The room seemed smaller now that it was mostly empty. He clicked on the television and sat down in the chair. He set the duffel bag on his lap and pulled out his hand drawing of the pool he had wanted to put in the backyard. He'd found it in the box of keepsakes. Diane must have kept it, although he didn't know why. How stupid he'd been. Like digging a pool was going to make things better. Not to mention the irony. What kind of person actually thought he could change things by doing something like putting a pool in the backyard? Maybe Diane had the right idea after all. Maybe there was nothing you could do. Just sit there and let things happen. Don't try to do anything. Let the sun rise and set. Don't move. Let the darkness surround you.

Chic made it a point to be at the Pair-a-Dice the afternoon
Green moved in. It was bad enough that Mary was checking her husband into We Care, but Carol Bowen-Smith also did these elaborate welcome parties for new residents, plucking away on a guitar and making up lyrics about the person's life. Chic wanted no part of any of that. However, he mistimed his return trip from the Pair-a-Dice, taking the four o'clock bus back, thinking that the party had happened after lunch. When he arrived at the facility around four-thirty, Mary and Green and Carol Bowen-Smith were sitting together at a cafeteria table. Chic tried to do an about-face, but then he heard someone say his name.

“Mr. Waldbeeser,” Carol called out, “you're just in time to welcome our new resident. Come say hi to Mr. Geneseo.”

Chic smelled like cigarette smoke, and his shirt was wrinkled. He was also chewing gum, something Carol had disapproved of ever since Jack Kearns nearly bit his tongue off while chewing bubble gum a few years back. Chic took a napkin out of his pocket and spit out the gum. Mary, Green, and Carol stared at him. He felt like he was standing in the middle of a stage under a blinding spotlight. Carol asked him if he was all right, and he said that he must have drunk too much coffee at the Pair-a-Dice. She then introduced him to Green and Mary, which, of course, was awkward. When shaking his hand, Green held on for too long and gave him an up-and-down examination, like he was a dog sniffing another dog's backside. Chic wondered if he was onto him. Mary made a comment about his name, calling it “unique.”